William P. Germano

What's an eye chart and how does it work? Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars, but we've created more anxiety-provoking ways to test the strength of our eyes. Encompassing a Spanish cleric's Renaissance guide to testing vision, a Dutch ophthalmologist's innovation in optical tech, and the witty subversion of the eye chart in advertising and popular culture, Eye Chart is an essay on the sharp, the fuzzy, and the invisible. It's about that familiar thing we read partially, and with difficulty. Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you can't read any further. To read the eye chart is the opposite of interpretative reading. You're supposed to read it up (the way we might use something up or eat it up). But you can't. It's like the shortest longest book in the world. Eye Chart is about that lesson in failure and unreadability that finally lets us see things.

For more than a decade, writers have turned to William Germano for his insider's take on navigating the world of scholarly publishing. A professor, author, and thirty-year veteran of the book industry, Germano knows what editors want and what writers need to know to get their work published. Today there are more ways to publish than ever, and more challenges to traditional publishing. This ever-evolving landscape brings more confusion for authors trying to understand their options. The third edition of Getting It Published offers the clear, practicable guidance on choosing the best path to publication that has made it a trusted resource, now updated to include discussions of current best practices for submitting a proposal, of the advantages and drawbacks of digital publishing, and tips for authors publishing textbooks and in open-access environments.--

The tales of Hoffmann' is a unique and important film, both in the history of British cinema and in the history of interdisciplinary art-making. It is the first full-throttle presentation of an opera on screen: a Technicolor exploration of romance, fantasy, and failure, more danced than sung, all told without a single spoken word.

"The syllabus is one of the central documents of academic life, the one thing every teacher needs to write and every student needs to read. Most syllabi begin with a course description, a statement of what the course is about. But how do we get there? How will our students get there? And where is there? This book by William Germano and Kit Nicholls is a field guide to, and collegial chat concerning, this fundamental but often overlooked document. It describes how syllabi work and don't work, offers advice and encouragement to the professor trying to finish yet another syllabus, and reimagines our students' encounters with our syllabi by reconsidering our own relationship to them. Sampling syllabi from a range of disciplines across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, Syllabus asks such questions as: what is a reading list, and what is it for? how do we build human time into the semester's clocktime? and can a syllabus be a living thing? Germano and Nicholls argue that at its heart, a syllabus is not really about what students have to know, or what the instructor will do, but what the students will do. A syllabus designed around doing is not only a faster and more effective way to move students toward knowledge, they contend, but also, importantly, an invitation into a community of practice-one that includes the students, the instructor, and countless others who will enter the classroom through readings, images, designs, and theories. Reimagining the syllabus as a sort of constitution-a founding document that creates a community out of a group of disparate individuals-they show that a syllabus is, above all, a privilege and a responsibility, as one of the few forms of writing that can quite directly call others to act"--

All new Phd's hope that their dissertations can become books. But a dissertation is written for a committee and a book for the larger world. William Germano's From Dissertation to Book is the essential guide for academic writers who want to revise a doctoral thesis for publication. The author of Getting It Published Germano draws upon his extensive experience in academic publishing to provide writers with a state-of-the-art view of how to turn a dissertation into a manuscript that publishers will notice. Acknowledging first that not all theses can become books Germano shows how some dissertations might have a better life as one or more journal articles or as chapters in a newly conceived book. But even dissertations strong enough to be published as books first need to become book manuscripts and at the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is a fundamental process of adapting from one genre of writing to another. Germano offers clear guidance on how to do just this. Writers will find advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents taming runaway footnotes shaping chapter length and confronting the limitations of jargon alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision. With crisp directives engaging examples and a sympathetic eye for the foibles of academic writing From Dissertation to Book reveals to recent PhD's the process of careful and thoughtful revisiona truly invaluable skill as they grow into their new roles as professional writers.