The Eighth Day

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This book is dedicated to the selfless among us whose belief in something greater than themselves elevates them to the truly heroic. Be they America’s teachers, first-responders, or military men and women, they are the best of us and an inspiration to the rest of us.

Just imagine them all sitting there in their underwear, William Jennings Hiccock thought, invoking a little trick a politician once revealed on overcoming the fear of public speaking. He scanned the three hundred expectant faces crowded into the Iroquois Banquet Room of the Westchester Hills Country Club. On second thought, that’s even more frightening.

Braving 50,000 football fans almost every week back at Stanford did little to prepare him for this night and he harbored an unsettling feeling all day. This was a tougher crowd than the one that packed the university’s stadium. Even though they were not as physical as the opposing eleven-man squad hell-bent on making him pay a painful price for every pass completion, this group was just as ominous and even more cutthroat. They were, after all, scientists.

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