For any who wish to help contribute to Bill's revisions:

THERE IS INDEED A WAY TO SEARCH THE PAGES OF LEARNING CURVE.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, an advanced copy of the book (not quite identical to the final version) has been scanned by Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Z93OvsN2yq8C

Google will not show every page of the book. But for a search, it will tell you the page number, and give you a snippet of surrounding text.

I hope this knowledge will speed things along.

You can also use Amazon.com's "Look Inside" search feature for this sort of search. (And both it and Google books show the relevant term to be on p. 139, not 138.)

I just used my moderator's privilege, not knowing you had posted this correction, to correct my typo in the original text. It did say "138" when I originally posted it.

BillP -- I had assumed that, as part of the editing and review process, TOR would have supplied you with a searchable PDF of the final version of the page images. I'm suprised that this isn't routine (but I'm an engineer, and am often suprised when the world doesn't work the way I think is logical).

I've used this trick a few times. Very helpful, but sometimes you have to be patient and re-phrase your search a couple of times to get it to display the precise pages you want.

p. 130 3rd para, last line:
" . . . and then Buddy Scoles, Denbo, McCauley, and the rest went out in canvas-winged mosquitoes."

Scoles appears multiple times in the book. McCauley appears earlier in the paragraph. This is the only mention of Denbo that I could find by physically reading, or by electronic searching. He doesn't appear in the index.

I'm guessing that a previous version of the ms. included a passage in which Denbo was fully identified, so that subsequent mentions could be simplified to his last name only. But the identifying info was trimmed, and the editing process didn't restore his 1st name here. Is that right?

While I was reading the book, I ran across another short list of last names in which one of listees was similarly otherwise unidentified, but I can't remember or find it now.

There are many ways in which the production of this book was, shall we say, not standard. Tor did not even provide me with any format of the final text. Up to the day I received the published book I did not know exactly what the final text would be.

Possibly you're right as to Denbo, but I cannot now dredge up any memory. You will find more information about him in Heinlein's appendix to the Buell letter.

I think you may be recalling a passage in a footnote about Heinlein's friends at the Academy, quoted from one of Leslyn's letters. IIRC the point was he had a few close friends but his circle was a bit larger than represented, because there were lists with overlapping members but not completely overlapping.

Robert Wayne Denbo was also at the NAF when RAH came to work there in 1942, as a test pilot. Eventually he retired as RADM

I've recently updated the errors and omissions listing on my author site, www.whpattersonjr.com, to include everything that has been caught from my proofreading, people writing in (thanks, everyone), and the pass through the galleys for the upcoming trade paper issue. This makes it the fifth revision of the errors and omissions list.