Customer Reviews

How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment

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I wish I could give this book a full review. Michele Lamont certainly deserves it. She has apparently written a useful and very interesting book about the inner workings of the academic world.

Unfortunately my reading was cut short by an outrageous error apparently made by the publisher. The book is missing 24 pages at the very core of the book, right at the part I most needed to read. This is immensely frustrating to me. I'm a PhD student in history and wanted to read this book before applying for fellowships in the next few weeks and months. I have deadlines approaching for prestigious fellowships and grants. Time is running short. I considered this book one of my indispensable guides. Right when I got to a sub-section entitled "Elements of the Proposal" -- one I most needed to read -- the text skipped the next 24 pages.

I have attached two reviewer photos to show exactly what happened. The first 162 pages of the book are normal. Where page 163 should be, the book reverts to page 139 and then repeats the next 24 pages, from 139 through 162. Then the book jumps back to where it would have been, page 187, and continues on normally to the end. The book is missing pages 163 to 186.

This is an outrageous error and I doubt my copy is the only one affected. Books these days (as far as I know) are published from digitized templates held by the publisher. It's not like they're placing typesets here, as in the old days. It stands to reason that the error affecting my copy exists also in the rest of the books printed in the same run. What astonishes me is that nobody has caught the error until now. The book has been reviewed in prominent academic journals and not a word has been mentioned about this problem. Harvard University Press needs to take full responsibility for the blame and do a recall on all affected copies immediately. This is a huge mistake by what should be one of the best university presses in the United States.

I'm very sorry for the sake of the author, Michele Lamont, that I'm rating her book so low on Amazon, but this error needs to be corrected before I delete my review. I will be returning my book immediately and seeking a full refund. Hopefully the new copy -- perhaps the hardcover? -- will arrive in satisfactory condition in time for my fast-approaching fellowship deadlines.

Informative book for academics from all disciplines. Lamont studies how academics make decisions in real life. The context of the investigation is the expert panel work that some academics do on behalf of funding agencies in social sciences and humanities. So readers from those fields interested in getting funding should find the book as a useful tool.