The Double Eagle

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to Roy, Claire and Sarah Toft, Bruce Ritchie, David Sale, Jeremy Green, Jeremy Walton, George Hammon, Sean Corbett, Julian Simmons, Charlotte Cameron, Mark Gill, Samantha Axtell, Maria Barrett, Nico Schwartz, Florian Reinaud, and most especially of all Rod Gillett, for their invaluable insight, comments, suggestions, and help. The book is immeasurably better because of it.

Thank you to Alison Callahan, my wonderful editor, for her insight and belief and championing of this book and to Wayne Brookes at HarperCollins UK, for his unfaltering support and infectious enthusiasm.

Thank you, too, to my agents, George Lucas at InkWell Management, in New York, and Jonathan Lloyd and Euan Thorneycroft at Curtis Brown, in London, for plucking me from the depths of their in-tray, spotting the potential of my early drafts, and for believing in me.

For their assistance in researching this book, I would like to acknowledge the Smithsonian Institution (National Museum of American History and National Numismatic Collection), The U.S. Mint, The Department of the Treasury, U.S. Army Armor Center — Fort Knox, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, the Turkish Ministry of Tourism, and the French Ministry of Culture.

And finally, my boundless love and thanks to my parents, Ann and Bob, to my sister, Joanna, to my wife, Victoria, and to our beautiful new baby daughter, Amelia.

London, September 2004