Thursday, October 20, 2005

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It's your very last chance to get in the acknowledgments!!

This appears to be the week when career setbacks translate into publishing successes.

A few days ago, Bruce Bartlett was fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Now, Rachel Deahl reports in Publishers Weekly that Doubleday is thrilled:

Sometimes getting your pink slip can be a good thing. That's the case with Bruce Bartlett, a now-former senior fellow at the conservative Dallas-based think tank National Center for Policy Analysis. Bartlett, an ardent Bush supporter in 2000 who was also a member of the George H.W. Bush Treasury department, was given his walking papers on Monday after his boss, president of the organization John C. Goodman, read the manuscript of his upcoming book, The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.

After The New York Times reported the news of Bartlett's firing, Doubleday (which is pubbing Impostor) quickly bumped the book's release date from April 4 to February 28. The imprint has also upped the book's print run from 30,000 copies to 50,000.

Coincidentally, after my own career setback, I have recently learned that Princeton University Press accepted my book manuscript for publication.

[Hooray!! This means it's coming out in a few months, right?--ed. How little you know about academic publishing, my notional friend. It means I will be spending the next couple of months to complete one final revision. After I hand it in, it will come out about a year after that. So my goal will be for the book to be released in 2006.]

And you -- yes, you, the not-so-average blog reader -- can help!! If you have a few spare days, feel free to peruse the manuscript. Let me know if you have any constructive criticisms, stylistic suggestions, or detect any typos (there are a bunch strategically sprinkled into the current version). If you're lucky, you too could find yourself mentioned in the acknowledgments in a major university press book!!

[Whoop-dee-frickin'-doo. This is a big deal?--ed. Well, it is for my field. Anyone in the discipline who sees a new book in their field will first check the acknowledgments, index, and bibliography to see if they are mentioned. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not to be trusted.]

posted by Dan on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM




Comments:

Dan,

Congrats on the impending book publication!

posted by: Jason on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Well, I gave it a skim-- "blah." You write better stuff here almost every day! One suggestion, re-read Rousseau. Ask yourself what kind of government he would characterize the US as. Because your two "opposing parables" seemed in perfect agreement from the start.

posted by: JasonP on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



After Wilma passes I will exploit my access to a commercial printer and print myself out a copy.

posted by: Chris Albon on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



I'll take a look, Dan, but it honestly sounds to me like you need a copy reader who pays meticulous attention to every detail. One may be available sometime after November, or so I've heard.

posted by: Zathras on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Ah wonderful, I can once again feel productive. Between the rush of finishing my thesis and trying to develop a logistics management plan at work, I thought life couldn't get more frantic, and for me, more exciting.

That is until 5:30 Monday morning on my way to work when someone decided to run a red light providing me with an opportunity to spend my week pecking furiously at the keyboard in a percocet induced, one handed (yes I love the new lighter, stronger fiberglass casts doc, even if I have to spend 12.5 hours in the ER to get one. Ah the joys of the free Canadian healthcare system) venture indulging in my second favorite hobby - political economics.

As luck would have it, my misfortune on the roads provides me the time to read about something I'm quite passionate about. I look forward to a great read this weekend and hope I will be able to provide some valuable comments. Dan, I do hope that your misfortune at the U of C opens the door to new, more promising opportunities.

posted by: Katie on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



"Well, it is for my field. Anyone in the discipline who sees a new book in their field will first check the acknowledgments, index, and bibliography to see if they are mentioned. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not to be trusted."

As opposed to fields where the first thing checked for is the author's enemies to see how they've been skewered?

posted by: John Quiggin on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



dan,

being that many of us would have paid for the book, i think you just lost a lot of profit.

posted by: anon on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



I kinda liked it, but it could use more sex.

posted by: Mike on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Excellent idea Dan. Any deadlines we should be aware of?

posted by: Sandra on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



I second Sandra's excellent question.

posted by: Chris Albon on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Come on Dan, don't blame globalization for bad IR theory. I'm quite confident bad IR theorists don't need globalization to exercise their craft!

posted by: z on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Damn, a few years ago I tried to write your chapter 5… you did far better than I did ;-).

posted by: François on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



anon: being that many of us would have paid for the book, i think you just lost a lot of profit.

Well, I assume the final copy will include photos of Salma Hayek to make up for that.

posted by: fling93 on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



you could still get those photos for free off this site.

posted by: anon on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Hey, that is my book! I wrote the exact thing myself. I knew someone was hacking into my computer.

Drezner, you will pay for this!

Do you have a contact at the Princeton Press so that I can straight out this mess.

posted by: Andrew on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



Dan,

A few impressions from reading rapidly through the first 20pp:

a) you write with exceptional clarity and a minimum of the jargon and cant that turned me off from an academic career in IR or Poli Sci;

b) like most of us in the center of the spectrum you seem to prefer presenting complex issues in terms of clearly-defined dichotomies-- another boost to clarity, though perhaps at the expense of accuracy;

c) you have no trouble stating your preferences and conclusions in simple, direct language.

Clarity. Lack of jargon. Courage of one's convictions. Do you still wonder why you didn't get tenure?

Why are you wasting your time in academia? Wouldn't you have a larger audience, and much more influence, as a 100% public intellectual? Isn't it possible to make a better living-- financially better, socially better, professionally better-- outside the academy?

best regards,
t

posted by: thibaud on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



I did a Ph.D. in the hard sciences and remember hearing that most of these academic press soft science books were just peoples Ph.D. theses turned into a book. Is that yours?

posted by: TCO on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]



You may want to check out Donald Knuth's policy on mistakes and typos in his tomes....

posted by: Dr. Basserman Jordann on 10.20.05 at 06:17 PM [permalink]






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