The paperback BFA, already listed on Amazon, comes out in October of this year. I had until 31 March to submit my list of corrections. I was told to keep them as short as possible, to avoid mucking up the typeset pages too much with ripple effects that would raise the cost of printing.

Fair enough, thought I, so kept the changes to the smallest number with the smallest impact possible.

Here’s the list I turned over to my contact at Berkeley, Jessica Wade.

TO: Jessica Wade

FROM: Tom Barnett

CC: Jennifer Gates

DATE: 20 March 2006

SUBJECT: Corrections for “Blueprint for Action” paperback version

Jessica,

I have sought to keep these changes to the bare minimum, passing on a number of corrections in the endnotes (overuse of conjunctions) and skipping an updating on the number of agencies in the Intelligence Community (the number went from 15 to 16, but adding the extra title would shift too much), plus a repeated name in the acknowledgements.

So these dozen changes are the ones I feel strongly about. Eleven of the 12 changes involve only one word, and the 12th involves a pair of words.

That’s it.

Thanks for making sure these changes happen,

Tom Barnett

1) PAGE 6, LINE 17

CHANGE “Office of New Assessment” TO “Office of Net Assessment”

(New‚ÜíNet)

2) PAGE 19, LINE 20

CHANGE “Colonel Picket’s” TO “General Pickett’s”

(Colonel‚ÜíGeneral)

(Picket’s→Pickett’s)

3) PAGE 68, THIRD LINE FROM BOTTOM

CHANGE “the Pentagon’s recognizing” TO “the Pentagon recognizing”

(Pentagon’s→Pentagon)

4) PAGE 126, LINE 20

CHANGE “great power inside” TO “great powers inside”

(power‚Üípowers)

5) PAGE 129, LINE 26

CHANGE “we bend the rule here and there” TO “we bend the rules here and there”

(rule‚Üírules)

6) PAGE 305, LINE 13

CHANGE “Swedish environmentalist Bjorn” TO “Danish environmentalist Bjorn”

(Swedish‚ÜíDanish)

7) PAGE 355, LINE 13 (NOT COUNTING BREAK IN PAGE)

CHANGE “agreements with Central American” TO “agreements with Central America”

(American‚ÜíAmerica)

8) PAGE 355, LINE 15 (NOT COUNTING BREAK IN PAGE)

CHANGE “and Andean South American” TO “and Andean South America”

(American‚ÜíAmerica)

9) PAGE 364, LINE 16

CHANGE “Steffany Hedenkemp” TO “Steffany Hedenkamp”

(Hedenkemp‚ÜíHedenkamp)

10) PAGE 364, LINE 18

CHANGE “Steve DiAngelis” TO “Steve DeAngelis”

(DiAngelis‚ÜíDeAngelis)

11) PAGE 397, SECOND LINE FROM BOTTOM

CHANGE “immediatley” TO “immediately”

(immediatley‚Üíimmediately)

12) PAGE 419, LINE 10

CHANGE “Swedish environmentalist Bjorn” TO “Danish environmentalist Bjorn”

(Swedish‚ÜíDanish)

Looking this over, and realizing I only passed on about another 20 words of changes, I felt pretty good. Remember, this is a text of over 175k words!