The entire Atlantic team is the smartest and most generous bunch around. I’m so grateful to Jeff Goldberg and Adrienne LaFrance for giving me so many opportunities, for believing in me, and for letting me take book leave. Denise Wills, Paul Bisceglio, Swati Sharma, Kate Julian, Ross Andersen, Julie Beck, and Rachel Gutman all have made and continue to make me a better writer and thinker every day. Before that, the Washington Post and USC Annenberg took a chance on a weird immigrant kid. Dan Beyers, Dion Hayes, K.C. Cole, Alan Mittelstaedt, and Marc Cooper gave me a voice and taught me how to use it.

So few things I do, including this, would be possible without Rich, the best partner in life and love. From reading early drafts to driving me across the country, he did so much to help me finish this project, and I’m eternally grateful to him.

My parents gamely sat for interviews and fact-checked the parts that related to them. I appreciate them so much for immigrating to America and for everything else they’ve done for me.

Finally, I have so much admiration and gratitude for the people who appear in this book. Their patience and vulnerability are commendable. They opened up their lives to me and to my readers, all in the service of making weirdos feel a little less alone. I hope their stories inspire others; I know they inspired me.

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Notes

“those phony ‘traditions’”: Lamb, S., The Not Good Enough Mother (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019), 81.

“sometimes lascivious”: Mercer, W., Orthopaedic Surgery (London: Edward Arnold, 1959).

“women in their cohort”: Bostwick, V. K., & Weinberg, B. A., “Nevertheless She Persisted? Gender Peer Effects in Doctoral STEM Programs” (September 2018), NBER Working Paper Series, 25028.

“smoking fifteen cigarettes”: Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., & Bradley Layton, J. B., “Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-Analytic Review,” PLoS Medicine (July 27, 2010): 7.

“deadlier than obesity”: Holt-Lunstad, J., Baker, M., Harris, T., Stephenson, D., & Smith, T. B., “Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Perspectives on Psychological Science (2015): 2, 10, 227–37.

“risk of dementia”: Holwerda, T. J., Deeg, D. J., Beekman, A. T., van Tilburg, T. G., Stek, M. L., Jonker, C., & Schoevers, R. A., “Feelings of Loneliness, but Not Social Isolation, Predict Dementia Onset: Results from the Amsterdam Study of the Elderly (AMSTEL),” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 85, no. 2 (2012): 135–42.

“more segregated by race”: Ferguson, J-P., and Rembrand, K., “Firm Turnover and the Return of Racial Establishment Segregation,” American Sociological Review 83, no. 3 (2018): 445–74.

“also on the rise”: Fry, R., & Taylor, P., “The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income,” Pew Research Center, August 2012, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/01/the-rise-of-residential-segregation-by-income/.

“match them perfectly”: Chandler, A., “Why Richer People Spend More Time with Their Friends,” Atlantic, May 9, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/friendship-privilege-income/481884/.