The book was written for a British audience, so the director of the Press, Joseph Brandt, did not expect it to be a big seller in the States. Brandt hoped to get the well-known New York Herald Tribune journalist and author Walter Lippmann to write the foreword, noting in an internal memo that if he did,

it might sell between two and three thousand copies. Otherwise, heestimated, it might sell nine hundred. Unfortunately, Lippmann was busy with his own work and so turned him down, as did the 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, whose 1943 book One World had been a bestseller. 1 John Chamberlain, the book review editor for the New York Times, was ultimately recruited for the job.

这本书是为英国读者而写的，所以出版社主任约瑟夫·布兰特没有想到它会在美国畅销。布兰特希望让著名的《纽约先驱论坛报》记者兼作家沃尔特·利普曼（Walter Lippmann）撰写序言，在一份内部备忘录中指出，如果他这样做，它可能会卖出两三千册。不然的话，估计可能卖九百块。不幸的是，利普曼忙于自己的工作，因此拒绝了他，1940年共和党总统候选人温德尔·威尔基（Wendell Wilkie）也是如此，他在1943年出版了一本畅销书《一个世界》。1《纽约时报》书评编辑约翰·张伯伦最终被录用担任这项工作。