It’s your very last chance to get in the acknowledgments!!

This appears to be the week when career setbacks translate into publishing successes. A few days ago, Bruce Bartlett was fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis. Now, Rachel Deahl reports in Publishers Weekly that Doubleday is thrilled: Sometimes getting your pink slip can be a good thing. That’s the case with Bruce Bartlett, ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

This appears to be the week when career setbacks translate into publishing successes. A few days ago, Bruce Bartlett was fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis. Now, Rachel Deahl reports in Publishers Weekly that Doubleday is thrilled:

This appears to be the week when career setbacks translate into publishing successes. A few days ago, Bruce Bartlett was fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis. Now, Rachel Deahl reports in Publishers Weekly that Doubleday is thrilled:

Sometimes getting your pink slip can be a good thing. That’s the case with Bruce Bartlett, a now-former senior fellow at the conservative Dallas-based think tank National Center for Policy Analysis. Bartlett, an ardent Bush supporter in 2000 who was also a member of the George H.W. Bush Treasury department, was given his walking papers on Monday after his boss, president of the organization John C. Goodman, read the manuscript of his upcoming book, The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. After The New York Times reported the news of Bartlett’s firing, Doubleday (which is pubbing Impostor) quickly bumped the book’s release date from April 4 to February 28. The imprint has also upped the book’s print run from 30,000 copies to 50,000.

Coincidentally, after my own career setback, I have recently learned that Princeton University Press accepted my book manuscript for publication. [Hooray!! This means it’s coming out in a few months, right?–ed. How little you know about academic publishing, my notional friend. It means I will be spending the next couple of months to complete one final revision. After I hand it in, it will come out about a year after that. So my goal will be for the book to be released in 2006.] And you — yes, you, the not-so-average blog reader — can help!! If you have a few spare days, feel free to peruse the manuscript. Let me know if you have any constructive criticisms, stylistic suggestions, or detect any typos (there are a bunch strategically sprinkled into the current version). If you’re lucky, you too could find yourself mentioned in the acknowledgments in a major university press book!! [Whoop-dee-frickin’-doo. This is a big deal?–ed. Well, it is for my field. Anyone in the discipline who sees a new book in their field will first check the acknowledgments, index, and bibliography to see if they are mentioned. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not to be trusted.]

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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