ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book took a while. I’m grateful to everyone who supported me in its creation as readers of drafts, sources of expertise, proofreaders, and friends. There are more of you than I could possibly name. I am especially grateful to all of the mental athletes who spent so much time with me, generously sharing their knowledge and their lives.

This book benefited from two editors. Vanessa Mobley guided it through its initial stages. Eamon Dolan expertly saw it through to completion. I am grateful to Ann Godoff for her faith in me and to everyone at Penguin Press for their work on this book’s behalf. My literary agent, Elyse Cheney, is the best partner anyone could ask for. Lindsay Crouse was an extraordinary checker of hard-to-pin-down facts. Brendan Vaughan helped make my writing much sharper.

In the interests of explanatory expediency, I have moved some details, conversations, and scenes around chronologically, but these changes don’t materially affect the truth of this book. To the extent that memory records and other time-sensitive facts are not always up-to-date, that is because I have tried to tell this story from the perspective I had when originally experiencing it. In the three years it took me to write this book, much changed in the world. My girlfriend became my wife. The thirty-second barrier in speed cards fell, and fell again. The poem event was finally nixed from international competition. And sadly, EP and Kim Peek passed away. I feel profoundly lucky for the time I was able to spend with them.