Top 10 Things You May Not Know
About Window Seat on the World

1. The beginning originally was the end - I intended to make the opening - about John Kerry’s return to Vietnam - the end of the book, since I didn’t want to harp on a part of his personal story many people already knew. As I said in the book, to my mind, “John Kerry” had almost become synonymous with “Vietnam.” But one person who read my draft manuscript - Scott Helman of The Boston Globe - suggested making it the opening for just that reason. Scott said people knew Kerry was connected to Vietnam, so this chapter of his personal history would be familiar and pull them into the rest of a book about unfamiliar subject matter. I set aside my concerns and cut-and-pasted the end to the beginning, making it the Prologue. I then went carefully went through the manuscript to ensure I added any missing first references to the new first chapter. Then I read the rest to ensure I deleted any extraneous identications in the remaining text.

2. I wrote the Epilogue in one night - The story about how John Kerry and I came to intersect through my work for him at the State Department struck me one night while I was thinking about the experience I’d just concluded. I went upstairs to my office, started typing away on my laptop, and three hours later had the rough draft of this chapter. It actually was the first element of the book I composed. I won’t spoil the surprise, but the facts and circumstances underpinning it hit me like a thunderbolt that night. I wrote a couple other chapters of the book with similar ease but then bogged down. I didn’t get over that writer’s block until I took a trip to New York City and sat in the silence of a friend’s apartment. Working at his dining room table, I tapped out a rough outline that finally freed my mind and let me progress through the rest of the chapters.

3. I found a photo of the scene I describe in the Epilogue - I describe a scene that occurred in Seattle in April 1998 that connected to the first State Department flight I took with John Kerry in February 2013. About a year after writing it, I was looking through some work boxes in my attic and found photos I’d taken back in the 1990s. One of them showed the scene I describe in that chapter, as well as the airplane related to it. It was an eerie discovery but made me proud of my memory! I’d been spot-on with my recollection of the scene.

4. Writing the book was complicated by the security process - Before I began work at the State Department, I had to sign a statement declaring I would submit anything I subsequently wrote back to the Department for review. If I didn’t, I could be forced to surrender any profits from it. We’re seeing this play out now as the Trump Administration seeks to garnish the earnings from John Bolton’s book. In such cases, the mandatory review doesn’t cover the content of what’s written, only the classification of it. So, the reviewers couldn’t cut something they didn’t like, per se, only excise content deemed Classified or otherwise sensitive from a national security perspective. In my case, we went through a couple rounds of reviews and the process was pretty straightforward. I was surprised by some of the requested changes - which mostly had to do with protecting Department security practices - and a few things that ended up passing muster (I’ll never say!). When we were finished, the Department also requested we publish a disclaimer at the beginning of the book. It’s on the Copyright page and reads, “The opinions and characterizations in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily represent official positions of the United States Government.”

5. I had to surrender the journals and notecards I kept - Under State Department rules, materials you produce during government service remain government property. That meant I had to surrender the green cloth journal books and breast-pocket notecards I used to write or scribble notes on during my four years of service. To use the details in the book, I had to fly to Washington, make an appointment to review my materials at the State Department archives, and then submit the notes I jotted down from them for a separate Department security review. The first time I saw those journals and notecards in a numbered, cardboard government box, it was like seeing an old friend!

6. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again - I wrote my manuscript before seeking a publisher because I didn’t want someone telling me I had to write something salacious to get a contract. I didn’t want to sugarcoat anything, but I also didn’t want to gin up attention injustifiably. I would go where the story took me, just as I’d done during nearly 30 years as a reporter. This decision made it harder to find an agent and, through one, a publisher. Prospective agents didn’t see a market for the book or me as a first-time author, and several said a publisher would want to be involved in not just the editing but the writing process. I became so frustrated with their rejections I fully laid out the book myself and planned to self-publish it. That’s when a friend asked if I’d tried reaching out directly to Disruption Books in Austin, Texas. I looked them up on the web, liked what I saw, and filled out a blank “Contact Us” card. I said I was at the end of my rope, wondered if they might be interested in my story, and asked whether they could give me a quick decision. Publisher Kris Pauls wrote me back almost immediately and asked to see the manuscript. After a day or so reading it, she said she wanted to publish it. That was in January 2019; the book was published in July 2019, a very quick turnaround. I’m forever grateful I hooked up with Kris and DB.

7. Women gave this book a huge boost - I would not have been able to write or publish this book without significant help from women in a variety of roles. First, my wife, Cathy, supported our family while I self-financed this book. As I just mentioned, when I was at wit’s end trying to find a publisher, Kris Pauls came through. Kris went on to hook me up with two more women - cover designer Kim Lance and copyeditor Mary Hardegree - who helped produce the finished copy. When I was done, Margaret Brennan and Mary Hager of CBS News helped me debut the book on “Face the Nation.” Andrea Mitchell of NBC News and Julie Mason of SiriusXM had me on their shows to promote it. And Manuela Cavalieri helped with all the details after Franco Nuschese offered to host my book launch party at his famed Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C. To paraphase Hamilton: “Women, they get the job done.”

8. The airplane graphics in the book are accurate - Designer Kim Lance had the clever idea to highlight the vignettes in the book graphically by beginning and ending them with an airplane in flight. If you look closely, the vignettes are topped with an airplane departing from “Point A.” They then end with the airplane arriving at “Point B,” symbolizing the start and end of our 109 trips and the many flights and colorful stories in between. Originally, Kim mocked up the graphic with the silhouette of a four-engine Boeing 747. As we got down to final details, I asked if we could switch that out for a representation of the real thing: a twin-engine Boeing 757, which is what we used for almost all our flights. I found an overhead schematic of the plane, emailed it to Kim, and she produced an authentic overhead silhouette of the 757. It was one more sign of her talent and the team’s overall attention to detail.

9. The publisher got her hands dirty - It was very important to me that this book be bulletproof in terms of accuracy, especially amid the cries of “fake news” so prevalent while I was writing it. I researched points I didn’t fully know, tried to break down new or historic disputes into terms any layman could understand, and made sure I footnoted each fact or potential point of contention. My writing program allowed me to track these footnotes as I wrote, even re-numbering them if I moved paragraphs (or whole chapters) around. When I finished, I had my friend Jon Finer read the manuscript for accuracy. He had been both State Department chief of staff and the Department’s director of policy planning. He would know if I got some policy point wrong. But when it came time to publish, Kris Pauls felt a couple other points should be footnoted for stylistic and consistency reasons. That created the potential for mistakes with the numbering and alignment with the point being footnoted. So, Kris took it upon herself to work with an intern to ensure all the footnotes were properly numbered, coordinated and formatted. With 529 Endnotes, it was a huge endeavor.

10. No one in my family saw the book until it was completed - I wanted my wife and sons to see only my best shot, so they never saw a page of Window Seat on the World until I had the final printed version in my hands. My mother, Joan, is an avid reader and wordsmith, so I did give her a review copy of the black-and-write manuscript. I got it back with her proofreading marks written in pencil. It took a while for my immediate family to finish reading the copies I signed for each one of them, but I was gratified when they did and related the points, experiences, or chapters that most resonated with them. In fact, that’s been the most satisfying part of the book’s first year in circulation. An idea that once was only in my head ended up on the screen of my laptop, before transitioning to the printed page. As copies of the book have traveled around the world (the reader photos under this website’s Speaking tab have been epic!), it’s been heartwarming to get notes from people telling me what surprised them, and what they learned from the time they spent with the pages. I know it’s a dense book informationally, but I felt lucky to have this experience and wanted to share the substance and color of the journey because so many of you were curious - and I knew I’d never do anything like it again.

Window Seat on the World is being distributed worldwide, sold through bookstores - both national and independent - and available to public libraries through the network of Ingram, Baker & Taylor.

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