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The third time is the charm. Like Three Days in January and Three Days in Moscow, Three Days at the Brink could never have been realized without the hard work, imagination, and dedication of my coauthor, Catherine Whitney. Catherine has the uncanny ability to throw herself into a project and absorb all of the details. In this case, we didn’t have personal interviews like we did with major players in Three Days in Moscow. Catherine scoured thousands of pages of library documents, oral histories, biographies, and notes from the Tehran Conference, and in the same back-and-forth process we used for the other two books, the result was a very readable and dramatic telling of an important three days in history, and a look back at the life of one of our most consequential presidents. The team was back together for this third effort, with our intrepid and industrious researcher, Sydney Soderberg, spending a lot of time at the FDR Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. The gems that Sydney was able to dig up provided the “crackle” in the detail and storytelling of that conference. A real-life drama told with the help of oral histories and notes from Tehran. The professionals at presidential libraries provide a crucial role of preserving and protecting presidential history. And the treasures they hold inside can paint a picture of a moment or a presidency. The FDR Library and Museum opened its doors wide to me and the team. I would like to personally thank Paul Sparrow, the director of the library. Paul was enthusiastic about the project from the start and helped get everything we needed. The FDR archives staff—Kirsten Strigel Carter, Virginia Lewick, Patrick Fahy, Christian Belena, and audiovisual specialist Matthew Hanson—could not have been more helpful. Clifford Laube, the public programs specialist, was a great help as well. And the tour from Scott Rector with the National Park Service really gave us an inside look at how FDR lived on the property growing up and until his death. We also returned to the Eisenhower Library for research into the relationship between FDR and General Eisenhower. Special thanks to the team at William Morrow, led by our fabulous editor, Peter Hubbard. Peter has a keen eye for making something “sing” a little better and all of his edits have made the book that much stronger. Peter has a special love for World War II and said this book delivered. It’s the “biggest” of the three in scope and completes the trilogy of books—the beginning, middle, and end of the Cold War. Peter and his team really boosted the book from the start. As always, thank you to my manager, Larry Kramer, and book agent, Claudia Cross with Folio Literary Group, for their encouragement and guidance through all three books. Thank you to my employer, Fox News, for allowing me the time to not only work on the book, but promote it during a busy news year (all years are busy now, it seems). And for putting together a one-hour documentary around this book as they did for the other two. And a very special thank-you to my family—my beautiful wife, Amy, and my two sons, Paul and Daniel. Travel, late nights, and another book tour was not a great thing to look forward to for a family pulled in a lot of different directions . . . but Amy, my rock, held all together at home and supported me one hundred percent. Finally, thank you to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—FDR. His fight to bounce back after being stricken with polio likely made him the president he eventually became. The decisions he made and the relationships he cultivated changed the world, and it’s my honor to be able to tell that story.