FOREWORD<br >I t was half a dozen years ago that the notion of doing this<br > book lhst took root. And in that time I ve changed my mind<br > half a dozen times about whether---and how---to put it to-<br >gether. Simply writing it， of cour:，c， would have bccn thc most<br >obvious way. l hat is， writing it myself. But at the beginning， be-<br >cause 1 wasn t sure i d have time for the task， 1 worked with a<br >young ghost writer named Nell Offen. We had long conversations，<br >taping sessions， followed by months of waiting for the product of<br >those encounters. Neil and I became good friends， but somewhere<br >along lhc way we agreed that it wasn t going to work out.<br > So the following summer 1 settled down to have a go at it myself，<br >and by the time 1 quit 1 had put fifty thousand words to paper. But<br >then I had to go back to work on 60 Minutes， and the fact is that<br >the rigors of doing twenty-live or thirty film pieces a year for that<br >broadcast soaked up just about all available psychic energy and<br >made it impossible (at least for me) to work up the requisite ardor<br >~hat such an additional undertaking required. At that point， I felt I<br > had no choice but to abandon the project， or at least put it off until<br > a time ~hcn the ticking stopwatch of O0 Minutes was no longer<br > serving a:， lhc insistent alarm clock that governs most of my work-<br > ing life.<br > But my agent， Bill Adler， who must bear the responsibility for<br > inducing mc to do this book， was determined to keep the ，，~:nture<br > alive， and when Bill has his mind set on something hc is a very<br >