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Product Details
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 Tra edition (March 6, 2015)
Reading How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco, even an ‘updated’ version in this MIT Press edition, felt like a sweet exercise in futility. There’s something folksy and quaint about being told how to put notes on index cards and properly organize them and being given tips for using the library and talking to librarians. (Not too surprising, as Eco wrote this in the late seventies—almost forty years ago!) But with over twenty-three editions and countless translations, there’s something to be said about this just-won’t-die thesis-writing guide. It endures, even in a world of Dropbox and Evernote and Endnote and online style guides and, of course, the oracle of information—the internet.
The reason for this is that Eco’s book actually has a lot more to say to people outside of academia, to those no longer writing long tracts of academic esoterica or using words like ‘juxtaposition,’ ‘asymmetricality,’ or ‘reconfigurations’ in everyday writing.
How to Write a Thesis could be easily re-titled ‘How to Live a More Realized Life’ or something along those lines—tongue-in-cheek, of course, as this is Eco and despite all the rhapsody in his prose is actually quite funny. What Eco’s classic tome gives us is the kind of advice you might get from an inspiring college graduation speech. It resonates with wisdom about being more curious, about being more engaged in the world—which is wonderful advice, especially for those who stand on the precipice of maturity, where on one side is youthful idealism and optimism still, and on the other side, lingering over the horizon, is the embittered resignation and indifference of...middle age?Read more ›
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This book is nothing short of brilliant. But what would one expect from Umberto Eco? It is an old, somewhat outdated, guide for students in Italian universities, who must, as undergraduates, produce a thesis. The book is a step by step guide in how to do this. I live in the United States where there is no such demand on undergraduates, and I am a high school English teacher. Yet I am in love with this book. Eco says that the researching and writing of an extended essay is an exercise in creativity and in exploration. Anyone who is interested in writing, particularly non-fiction, or who is in charge of student writers, from high school through graduate school, should add this to hen library--right alongside Fowler's, Strunk and White, and the OED. It is that good.
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See the Robert Eaglestone review dated 19 March 2015 in THES. This is why I bought the book, and having read it, I fully agree with the positive commentary in that review. I have now ordered a copy for my university's library, and I'll recommend it to all of my research students. Eco's specific area of academic specialisation may be very different from yours, but that should not deter you from finding out more about this book: I am a researcher in finance and accounting and still found the book to be remarkably relevant.
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