Acknowledgments




Coming Apart is the final expression of thoughts that were planted by my experiences in the villages of northeast Thailand in the 1960s. They germinated through the 1970s as I evaluated American social programs to help the disadvantaged. Then in 1980, events in my personal life led me to reflect on how little success and money have to do with happiness. That prosaic insight, combined with my evolving ideas about government, made me decide to write a book about the relationship of happiness to public policy.

It turned out that I couldn’t jump right into that topic. Losing Ground, published in 1984, looked to its readers like a stand-alone book. To me, it was the underbrush that had to be cleared away before I could write the book that I had originally intended. That book, titled In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, was published in 1988. I am sure all authors have a favorite among the books they write. In Pursuit has remained mine.

The content of In Pursuit has been a backdrop to most of what I have written since. Its influence on the last two chapters of The Bell Curve is obvious. In Pursuit’s themes are threaded throughout What It Means to Be a Libertarian. The Aristotelian Principle that figured prominently in part 2 of In Pursuit frames part 4 of Human Accomplishment and lies behind the argument of Real Education. My advocacy of a guaranteed minimum income in In Our Hands is explained in terms of the pursuit of happiness. Twenty-three years after In Pursuit appeared, I remain devoted to its central policy thesis: The framework created by the American founders, stripped of its acceptance of slavery, is the best possible way to enable people of all kinds to pursue happiness.

I have been aware from the outset that Coming Apart would be my valedictory on the topic of happiness and public policy, and have also recognized the possibility that it would be my valedictory, period—I am sixty-eight as I write this, and nothing is promised. Since so much that I was writing grew from thoughts and themes that have evolved for the last forty-five years, I began to take pleasure in embedding bits and pieces of earlier writings—a phrase here, a trope there, sometimes whole sentences—wondering if anyone but me would ever notice.

I will give away a few important examples here. The prologue of Coming Apart uses the same literary device that opened Losing Ground, and a few of its sentences echo sentences in Losing Ground. The discussion of the foundations of the new upper class in chapter 2 draws heavily on the analysis I wrote with Richard J. Herrnstein in The Bell Curve. I came across Toynbee’s “Schism in the Soul” because of work I was doing for Human Accomplishment, and my discussion of it in chapter 17 draws directly from an article I wrote about it for the Wall Street Journal. The Europe Syndrome was first described in In Our Hands. The conclusion of chapter 17 draws from the Irving Kristol lecture “The Happiness of the People,” which I delivered while writing Coming Apart. Most obviously, the discussion of the stuff of life in chapter 15 and the application of that material to an argument for limited government in chapter 17 draw from In Pursuit. To some, all this may seem to be a form of plagiarism. I prefer to think of it as requiring me to make my first acknowledgment to the bright ideas of my younger self.

Bill Bennett deserves a special acknowledgment. We had decided to write a book together and prepared a proposal on the same broad topic as Coming Apart. At the last minute—and I do mean the last minute—I realized that the book I wanted to write would be such a personal statement that I couldn’t collaborate with anyone, not even someone as simpatico as Bill. He didn’t let my abrupt about-face damage our friendship, and generously told me to go ahead and write the book on my own.

I asked a variety of scholars to review portions of Coming Apart that either referenced them or dealt with matters on which they were expert. I will not name most of them. Being included in my acknowledgments can cause trouble for people in academia. This has led a few of them to make a public show of denouncing their acknowledgment lest their colleagues think they agree with anything I have written. But I nonetheless want to thank, even if anonymously, those who responded to my queries. I can safely thank by name colleagues who are also friends: Tom Bouchard, Arthur Brooks, John Dilulio, Greg Duncan, Earl Hunt, Irwin Stelzer, and James Q. Wilson. Thanks go as well to my guides to Fishtown: Mike DiBerardini, Chuck Valentine, and especially Ken Milano.

Karlyn Bowman, who directs the American Enterprise Institute’s Social Processes Group, gave me unstinting support, moral and material, throughout the project. Andrew Rugg provided prompt and efficient logistic support. Many AEI staff members responded to my request to take a draft version of the quiz in chapter 4, and greatly improved the revised version through their comments.

Thanks once again—how many times does this make in the last quarter century?—to Amanda Urban, the Platonic ideal of the literary agent. Sean Desmond provided seasoned editorial guidance and was uncomplainingly patient when the schedule slipped. Maureen Clark was an amazingly meticulous copyeditor. Catherine wielded her red pen lovingly but unsparingly.

Charles Murray
Burkittsville, Maryland
July 18, 2011