Acknowledgments
Given that I had little interest in, or knowledge of, populism as I began my academic career, I find myself looking back with some surprise that I’ve now completed yet another book on the subject. Populism has a way of sucking you in. If ten years and three books seem like a lot to dedicate to a single problem, I haven’t done it alone. I owe most appreciation to Kate, my partner in everything. Amid illnesses and lockdowns, the last few years have made it even harder for us all to leave work at the “office,” but Kate has shared my attention with Roosevelt, Churchill, De Gaulle, and others with equanimity and humor.
About halfway through the writing of this book, we moved from Canberra to Melbourne, as I left my position at the Australian National University (ANU) to join the new Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University (ACU). I thank the academic and professional staff at both ANU and ACU for providing such supportive research environments and making that transition as smooth as possible.
One of the reasons for my sustained interest in populism has been the amazing engagement I’ve had from colleagues and friends over the years. Once people learn that I study and write about people like Trump for a living, they’re never short of a question or an opinion. I am grateful for all of those conversations. I’ve benefited from lots of direct and indirect engagement with fellow political scientists and economists on this book. I received valuable feedback from presentations of this project at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Canberra, Dublin City University, Korea University, and the Academia Sinica. I particularly want to thank Jan Werner Müller, Kurt Weyland, and Andrew Leigh, who read all or part of the manuscript, and provided me with very useful criticisms. I also thank the anonymous reviewers solicited by Cambridge University Press for their thoughtful comments.
Finally, I’d like to thank my editor at Cambridge University Press, Robert Dreesen, as well as Lucy Rhymer, the editor of a previous book of mine, who connected us for this project. They and the rest of the team at Cambridge did a fantastic job in bringing this book to fruition.
