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The Thesis and the Book: A Guide for First-Time Academic Authors contains a great deal of information and useful advice for both the novice and professional academic writers alike. It was originally written for graduate students as a “how to” guide to assist with the “publish or perish” academic world. This revised edition of the original published back in 1976 superimposes the previous one by revising and expanding existing chapters to meet today’s publishing demands. The original edition was composed of articles taken from Scholarly Publishing, now known as the Journal of Scholarly Publishing. The first part of the book discusses what a good thesis should be, audience and style as well as the dissertation’s “deadly sins.” Robert Plant Armstrong’s chapter about the ladder categorizes these interdependent six sins as amateurism, redundancy, trivialization, specializationism, reductionism, and arrogance. Even though “the six defects of a dissertation” (as Armstrong identifies them) are self-explanatory just by analyzing their given titles, some of the issues discussed include: too much use of the passive voice, structural-functional and informational redundancy, insensitivity to language, the tendency to write about part of something as if it were the whole, and the arrogance of the personal dissertation. The authors pinpoint issues related to how a dissertation can become a published book throughout many chapters in the book. “Revising the dissertation and publishing the book” is a chapter that focuses on revision for probity, for responsibility, and for unity. The following middle chapters accentuate the dissertation and book mechanics and styles. The very practical academic checklist in a chapter written by Barbara B. Reitt is intended for academic and scientific writers in all fields with students and future authors in mind. This checklist can help authors to assess their early drafts and help bring these to the final product. It may also be used to address a colleague’s work in progress. Most useful are the last questions which aid the authors in preparing the final draft. These questions may be more accommodating to professional writers of journal articles, monographs and books giving them a better chance to publish. The last chapter of the book gives detailed advice to novice authors. Some of the most memorable pieces of advice are: 1) the expectation that there will be corrections to the book, 2) to make sure a copy editor goes over the manuscript, 3) the need for the author to assist in the sale of the book even if it means buying extra copies for the book to reach readers who can strengthen its reputation, 4) a discussion of the predicament the publisher has if the book sales fall, and 5) the differences within monograph series, trade and university presses in securing funds to publish. It is simple to see why this book has become the bible of graduate students. As Allan H. Pasco verbalizes in the last chapter of the book, “The issue is how to publish in such a way that the author and the field benefit for many years to come.” ---------------------------- Reviewed by Jose A. Carmona Jose A. Carmona is the president/co-founder of Global Educational Institute, Inc. in Daytona Beach, FL. For 25 years, he has taught ESL and Spanish classes, chaired departments of languages, adult ESOL, and intensive ESL programs (IEP), and has been an educational consultant. Mr. Carmona has a Master of Arts and a Master of Education in Spanish and bilingual education from Columbia University/Teachers College in New York; he also completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, Latin American literature and education at Drew University in New Jersey. He is the author of an ESL reading and writing textbook series, a beginning Spanish textbook, his own book of poetry, Adolescent Blues, and Perspectives on Community College ESL vol. 3: Faculty, Administration and the Working Environment published by TESOL in 2008. His latest book, Language Teaching and Learning in ESL Education: Current Issues, Collaborations and Practice, is going to press May 2010.
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