This book will show how Spring Boot can automatically deal with the behind-thescenes stuff that goes into an application, freeing you to focus on the tasks that make your application unique. In many ways, this is analogous to what went into making this book happen. There were so many other people taking care of making things happen that I was free to focus on writing the content of the book. For taking care of the behind-the-scenes work at Manning, I’d like to thank Cynthia Kane, Robert Casazza, Andy Carroll, Corbin Collins, Kev in Sullivan, Mary Piergies, Janet Vail, Ozren Harlovic, and Candace Gillhoolley. Writing tests help you know if your software is meeting its goals. Similarly, those who reviewed Spring Boot in Action while it was still being written gave me the feedback I needed to make sure that the book stayed on target. For this, my gratitude goes out to Aykut Acikel, Bachir Chihani, Eric Kramer, Francesco Persico, Furkan Kamaci, Gregor Zurowski, Mario Arias, Michael A. Angelo, Mykel Alvis, Norbert Kuchenmeister, Phil Whiles, Raphael Villela, Sam Kreter, Travis Nelson, Wilfredo R. Ronsini Jr., and William Fly. Special thanks to John Guthrie for a final technical review shortly before the manuscript went into production. And extra special thanks to Andrew Glover for contributing the foreword to my book. Of course, this book wouldn’t be possible or even necessary without the incredible work done by the talented members of the Spring team. It’s amazing what you do, and I’m so excited to be part of a team that’s changing how software is developed.