On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts (by William Germano)

So you’ve just finished writing something? Congratulations! Now revise it. On Revision will show you how to know when your writing is actually done—and, until it is, what you need to do to get it there.

Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) (by Thomas S. Mullaney and Christopher Rea)

The hardest part of research isn’t answering a question. It’s knowing what to do before you know what your question is. Where Research Begins tackles the two challenges every researcher faces with every new project: How do I find a compelling problem to investigate—one that truly matters to me, deeply and personally? How do I then design my research project so that the results will matter to anyone else?

William Germano is the author of several books, including Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books and From Dissertation to Book, both also published by the University of Chicago Press. His most recent book, co-written with Kit Nicholls, is Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything. He has served as editor-in-chief at Columbia University Press, vice president and publishing director at Routledge, and dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he is now professor of English literature.  https://cooper.edu/humanities/people/william-germano

Tom Mullaney is Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the co-author of Where Research Begins (University of Chicago Press, 2022, with Christopher Rea), The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press 2017), and Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (UC Press, 2010), among other works. His writings have appeared in Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, Quartz, the South China Morning Post, TechCrunch, the Journal of Asian Studies, Technology & Culture, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. His work has been featured in RadioLab, The Atlantic, the BBC, and in invited lectures at Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and more. He earned his BA and MA from the Johns Hopkins University, and his PhD from Columbia University.

Darren Sweeper is the Head of Government Documents and Research Services Librarian at Montclair State University’s Harry A. Sprague Library in Montclair, New Jersey. His work is focused on instructing students how to use government information to conduct research in Criminal Justice, Sociology, Political Science and Public Health.  Darren is also interested in data literacy, institutional repositories and lifelong learning. He received his B.S. in Criminal Justice and Sociology, M.A. in Political Science and Masters in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University.

Christopher Rea is Professor of Asian Studies and former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. A native of Berkeley, California, he earned a BA from Dartmouth College and a PhD from Columbia University, and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University and at universities in Taiwan and Australia. His books include Where Research Begins (University of Chicago Press, 2022, with Tom Mullaney), Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (2021), The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection (2017, with Bruce Rusk), and The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (2015).