A preface often justifies an author's having brought pen to paper. I have left that task to my first chapter. Here, I wish to relate how I came to Switzerland and to write this book, discuss how I pursued my research, and thank some people for their part.

Before I left for Switzerland to study the Swiss grazing commons, I had little notion that the inquiry would turn into my doctoral dissertation and no idea that it would become a book on open access, private property, and common property. I simply wished to return to a country that I had glimpsed and for which I had developed an ardency during an undergraduate stay in neighboring Germany. Professor Richard C. Bishop of the University of Wisconsin–Madison discussed with me his interest in the Swiss grazing commons as an example of common property, and given my knowledge of German and desire to revisit the country, the basic ingredients for an application to the Fulbright-Hays program existed. The opportunity to go arose with the awarding of a Swiss government fellowship through this program.

Studying the Swiss commons called on me to travel widely in Switzerland by bus and train and even on foot, speaking with farmers, academics, government officials, and fellow students. I put my bags down in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for most of my stay, living with three Swiss students studying at the Graduate School of Business and Economics in St. Gallen, but I also lived for a period in Bern to be closer to the subject of my most intensive study, the Bernese alpine grazing areas.