WSJ.com - Thanks for Nothing

WSJ.com - Thanks for Nothing: "Book acknowledgments can provide a moment of glory for otherwise anonymous minions: The authors of a just-released thriller thank a hairdresser and their maid. But in many cases, writers strategically use acknowledgments to burnish their own image or further their careers -- which can be easy to do, because acknowledgments, unlike virtually all other elements of a book, aren't fact-checked and sometimes not even edited. 'There is a weird, perhaps subconscious, name-dropping going on,' says Jonathan Burnham, publisher of HarperCollins. 'Some writers are almost being competitive, dropping as many upmarket literary names as possible to prove their pedigree.'"