The Academic Self: An Owner's Manual

Rating:
Summary: For a narrower audience than the title suggests
Review: Despite the generality of the title, Hall's book is heavily bent towards an audience of humanities professors and graduate students whose careers are in - or will be in - teaching rather than research institutions. Although there is much that is accessible and relevant to a wider audience of academic professionals, Hall's heavy use of terminology from his own discipline (I still have no idea what a problematization is,) as well as his assumption that the reader is familiar with one particular school of self-help books, makes much of the book useless to someone who hasn't read and studied what he has.

The introduction is the worst part in this respect. If I wasn't given this book by someone who expected me to read it, I would have stopped right there. However, "The Academic Self" does oscillate between addressing Hall's fairly limited core audience and providing useful advice to a broader range of scholars, both at an abstract level and in terms of nuts-and-bolts, plan-out-your-day suggestions.