On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:43:11 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: >Mike Palij wrote: >>Chris Green informed us: >>> Historians are much more likely to circle around a topic >>> for a little while, exploring its nooks and crannies (perhaps >>> this is why the book, rather than the journal article, is still >>> the preferred vehicle of historians and other humanists). >> >> Thank you clearing this up for me. I thought going the book >> publishing route for academics was to avoid having to face >> peer review prior to publication. As with Herrnstein & >> Murray's "The Bell Curve", sometimes it's better to just >> put a book out and deal with the criticism afterwards because >> it is possible that the prior peer review would point out that >> the book is a piece of trash, to put it nicely. > >You are mistaken if you believe that scholarly books are not peer >reviewed.
Wait a second while I check this book. *searching* Hmmm, I have David McCullough's "John Adams" and I can't find any indication that it was peer-reviewed. His Acknowledgements on pages 653-656 identify a number of people who provided information, read chapters, made suggestions, etc., etc., but nothing saying peer review. Is McCullough's "John Adams" considered not be a "true" scholarly work? The book looks like scholarly work (let's see: source notes, bibliography, index, etc.). *sniff, sniff* It smells like a scholarly work (anyone who has spent any time in the Strand bookstore in NYC will appreciate what books smell like). It even has rave reviews (TIME Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and a large variety of other sources) or do "real" historians rely upon book reviews in "privileged" sources like "The American Historian" (if there is such a journal). Is it fish or is it fowl? Or are you talking about other types of historians and publishers who may request/provide peer review if requested? Can you identify which publishers of scholarly historical works do so? Perhaps the university presses like Oxford, Cambridge, etc.? But I wonder if they would limit peer review only to history books and not their other areas, like their psychology titles? >Peer reviewers for history books are every bit as rigorous as >journal reviewers, probably more so because journal articles are >considered by humanists to be (more or less) "dry runs" for >chapter in an eventual book . Do people in the humanities really call themselves "humanists"? This would suggest that American Humanist Association is an association for academics in the humanities instead of an association for the promotion of a particular set of philosophical beliefs as expressed on their website: http://www.americanhumanist.org/What_We_Do/Overview Perhaps I should cancel my subscription to The Humanist? ;-) >As for H&M, that book was published by Free Press, >hardly a well-respected scholarly press. Maybe that's why one >finds all that junk in the "psychology" section in books stores -- >psychologists can't tell scholarly publishers from trade publishers. :-) Oh boy, Stephen Pinker and Robert Sternberg are both going to kick your butt! ;-) -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
