It is common for historians—Michael Quinn comes to mind—and various journalists to warrant their work by thanking virtually everyone they have met for assisting them with their research, but Palmer gives only a general nod of appreciation to nameless "friends and colleagues" who read the "first and subsequent drafts" of An Insider's View (p. xiii). Are these people nameless because revealing who they are would signal that he is an "insider" among those on the fringes—that is, among apostates, dissidents, and cultural Mormons? He also neglects to indicate what triggered the first draft of his book, who helped him get started on his book in the 1980s, who encouraged him, who provided him with information then or more recently, who fed him ideas, or who it was that polished his manuscript for publication.