The Art Of Book Acknowledgments (Dreary And Mundane, But Sometimes Quite Revealing)

Some revelations are inadvertent, and not especially flattering to the author. In my head, I have an informal taxonomy of acknowledgments, and one species is the Name-Dropper. Do writers know the kind of insecurity they’re betraying when they do their Trump Towers of thanks, their gold-plated word-piles of self-regard?