Another road to Harvard?
As academics and people close to them know, getting a revised dissertation published as a book is an important component of career strategy.
It is a precondition to earning tenure at research universities, is a big help in getting hire at such institutions, and adds a bit of luster at teaching-oriented schools as well. (I like a happy balance between research and teaching.) I attended the big annual history conference - American Historical Association - last month in Washington, D.C. I had one formal first-round job interview and one informal one there and have had a couple of phone interviews since, but no definite progress toward a tenure-track job for next year. I also saw several old friends and made several new ones at the conference. Finally, I made the rounds at the publishers' exhibit. I picked up name cards for acquisition editors at the top university presses and discussed my manuscript with several of them. I have sent out the first few book proposals and am waiting for responses - which will hopefully include at least one request for the complete manuscript or at least a couple of chapters. One of the editors I talked with represents Harvard University Press. Harvard's history department did not hire me, but - who knows? - maybe I will have better luck with their press. My friend Marty Sklar gave me the same advice, with respect to presses, that Clint Eastwood gave his partners as he was struggling with assassin John Malkovich in a glass elevator in _In the Line of Fire_: "Aim high!"
-- Norty