Classic Bad Books

Bad books in my field, classics and comparative literature, come in two primary varieties. The first is the easiest to spot. These books are generally dull plodding affairs in which a hobbyhorse is ridden into the ground over several hundred pages. They often include long lists and tables but very little real analysis or probing argument. The prose is wooden and the documentation laborious. Many of these are unrevised dissertations. They are often published by what are uncharitably termed vanity presses: for profit companies with little if any objective refereeing of manuscripts (e.g., some allow you to pick your own referees). These presses often demand hefty subventions, print only very small runs, and expect the authors to do almost all the editorial work. They profit off the need of academics to publish books for tenure and promotion. They take advantage of the naïve who believe that getting something between hard covers will be their ticket to professional success or at least survival, when often all it means is that either the authors or their institutions will be out several thousand dollars.

The second variety of bad books represents the mirror image of the first. These books make audacious claims, profess to shift the reigning paradigms in their field, and are often written with a decided rhetorical panache. They feature little in the way of real supporting evidence and offer specious or circular argumentation in favor of their grandiose claims. They are almost always books by well-known senior figures in their fields and published by well-respected academic and commercial presses. They have been nominally refereed, but because of the prestige of their authors and the relatively large potential sales anticipated by the press, these books are allowed to get by with a degree of argumentative and evidentiary sloppiness that would never be tolerated in the work of more junior colleagues. Such books allow unsupportable claims to become current in their respective academic disciplines, and it is only the prospect of rigorous and critical reviews in major journals that serve as a break on their pernicious effects.