Overview
I've helped hundreds of academics, professional and amateur writers, publishers, and book packagers rework book manuscripts to bring out their full potential. Prominent authors whose books I've worked on include Noam Chomsky, Yegor Gaidar (acting prime minister of Russia in 1992), Alfred Tauber, Noson Yanofsky, and others. Whether these projects have required developmental or substantive editing, manuscript evaluations, copyediting, research, or other services, I've worked closely with clients to help them realize their publishing goals.
I try to treat each manuscript as if it's my own, polishing it in ways I would want my own book to be polished, and many books I've worked on have received awards or other accolades. In particular, my years teaching literature, linguistics, and writing courses at the university level have given me excellent research skills and a knowledge of academic publishing. Many clients have expressed gratitude that I've been able to catch serious factual errors as well as identifying and fixing more normal organizational and stylistic problems.
I specialize in nonfiction projects and am highly proficient in Chicago and other styles (as well as having a good reading knowledge of German). If you're looking for developmental editing, copyediting, or an editorial assessment, I look forward to working with you to help create the best possible publishing outcome.
TESTIMONIALS
"My book just came out and I have been flipping through the pages. It is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. ... Please accept my appreciation for your great editing. You did a fantastic job."--Noson S. Yanofsky, The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us, MIT Press (winner of the 2013 PROSE Award in Popular Science & Mathematics)
"You did a fabulous job editing my book."--Eric Higgs, Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration, MIT Press
"You were directly responsible for helping me land my first book contract. ... What surprised me most was the personal interest you took in my success. It was as if you had sent your own manuscript off to the publisher."--Scott Zamek, New Jersey State Parks: Camping and Recreation Guide, Stackpole Books; also author of two well-received memoirs, One More Horizon: The Inspiring Story of One Man's Solo Journey around the World on a Mountain Bike and The Hitchhiker's Guide to Life (both self-published)
"I wanted to thank you for your extremely useful and careful work on my book. ... I feel about you the way I felt about the labor/delivery nurse during the birth of my first child--I couldn't have done the job I wanted to do without you and her."--Nancy S. Cotton, Lessons from the Lion's Den: Therapeutic Management of Children in Psychiatric Hospitals and Treatment Centers, Jossey-Bass
I try to treat each manuscript as if it's my own, polishing it in ways I would want my own book to be polished, and many books I've worked on have received awards or other accolades. In particular, my years teaching literature, linguistics, and writing courses at the university level have given me excellent research skills and a knowledge of academic publishing. Many clients have expressed gratitude that I've been able to catch serious factual errors as well as identifying and fixing more normal organizational and stylistic problems.
I specialize in nonfiction projects and am highly proficient in Chicago and other styles (as well as having a good reading knowledge of German). If you're looking for developmental editing, copyediting, or an editorial assessment, I look forward to working with you to help create the best possible publishing outcome.
TESTIMONIALS
"My book just came out and I have been flipping through the pages. It is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. ... Please accept my appreciation for your great editing. You did a fantastic job."--Noson S. Yanofsky, The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us, MIT Press (winner of the 2013 PROSE Award in Popular Science & Mathematics)
"You did a fabulous job editing my book."--Eric Higgs, Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration, MIT Press
"You were directly responsible for helping me land my first book contract. ... What surprised me most was the personal interest you took in my success. It was as if you had sent your own manuscript off to the publisher."--Scott Zamek, New Jersey State Parks: Camping and Recreation Guide, Stackpole Books; also author of two well-received memoirs, One More Horizon: The Inspiring Story of One Man's Solo Journey around the World on a Mountain Bike and The Hitchhiker's Guide to Life (both self-published)
"I wanted to thank you for your extremely useful and careful work on my book. ... I feel about you the way I felt about the labor/delivery nurse during the birth of my first child--I couldn't have done the job I wanted to do without you and her."--Nancy S. Cotton, Lessons from the Lion's Den: Therapeutic Management of Children in Psychiatric Hospitals and Treatment Centers, Jossey-Bass
Services
Non-Fiction
Biographies & Memoirs
Earth, Space, & Environmental Sciences
History
Humanities & Social Sciences
Nature
Religion & Spirituality
Languages
English (US)
Certifications
- PhD in English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- MA in religion, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley
Work experience
Self-employed
Jan, 1986 —
Present
Have edited hundreds of scholarly books, textbooks, and trade books for most major US publishers and many small presses and book packagers; publishers have included HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan, Prentice Hall, Wiley, Jossey-Bass, MIT Press, and many others. Nonfiction manuscripts have included memoirs and travel adventures as well as scholarly books and trade books on almost every topic: religion and spirituality, higher education, business, technology, healthcare, history, politics, nature and the environment, urban planning, psychology, sociology, criminology, linguistics, philosophy, women's literature, and others.
Have also provided a wide range of editorial services (developmental editing, copyediting, manuscript evaluations or critiques, major rewrites, ghostwriting, research) to individual authors, both traditionally published and self-published.
Kansas State University
Aug, 1984 —
May, 1985
(9 months)
Coordinated staff of about 30 faculty members and supervised office staff; handled budget and curriculum matters; taught courses
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Aug, 1983 —
Jun, 1984
(10 months)
Taught literature and writing courses
University of Hawaii at Hilo
Aug, 1980 —
Jul, 1983
(almost 3 years)
Taught literature, linguistics, and writing courses (composition, ESL, business writing, creative writing); chaired Linguistics Program, 1981-1982
Portfolio
What if you could recognize patterns in your life and then use that knowledge to get ahead, manage your well being, and prepare for both good and bad times? What if the blueprint of your existence was within your grasp via an extensively researched mathematica... read more
"I've got a gun under my seat, so don't try anything." Such were the types of rides Scott Zamek encountered after chucking his job, donning a backpack, and hitchhiking 10,000 miles around the dusty roads of America. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Life puts us in th... read more
Pedaling a bicycle around the world was a lifelong dream, but everyone told him it could not be done. Dismissing the skeptics, disinterested sponsors, and a woefully inadequate bank account, Scott Zamek resolved to try. Some 25,000 miles and six million pedal ... read more
An examination of how the scientific study of sound sensation became increasingly intertwined with musical aesthetics in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria.In the middle of the nineteenth century, German and Austrian concertgoers began to hear new rhythms ... read more
An original methodological framework for approaching the archived web, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right.As life continues to move online, the web becomes increasingly important as a source for understanding the past. But historians h... read more
Case studies exploring how experts' encounters with environmental justice are changing technical and scientific practice.Over the course of nearly thirty years, the environmental justice movement has changed the politics of environmental activism and influence... read more
Knowledge about environmental problems has expanded rapidly in recent decades, as have the number and variety of processes for making large-scale scientific assessments of those problems and their possible solutions. Yet too often scientific information has no... read more
It is well known that American businesses make an effort to influence environmental policy by attempting to set the political agenda and to influence regulations and legislation. This book examines what is not so well known: the extent to which business succee... read more
Readings that point the way to a peaceful, democratic, and ecologically resilient transition to an era of localization, limits, and societal opportunities.Energy supplies are tightening. Persistent pollutants are accumulating. Food security is declining. There... read more
Case studies demonstrate the spatial disconnect between global consumption and production and its effects on local environmental quality and human rights.Multinational corporations often exploit natural resources or locate factories in poor countries far from ... read more
Americans today are increasingly concerned about the state of the environment. Polls show that a remarkable 63 percent would roll back recent tax cuts to finance environmental protection and that fully 95 percent want environmental education included in the pu... read more
Scholars argue for the importance of the developmental synthesis, or evo-devo, discussing the history and potential of this growing field of study and presenting specific case studies.The twentieth century's conceptual separation of the process of evolution (c... read more
Notions of nature and art as they have been defined and redefined in Western culture, from the Hippocratic writers and Aristotle of Ancient Greece to nineteenth-century chemistry and twenty-first century biomimetics.Genetically modified food, art in the form o... read more
Experts discuss the contractual instability resulting from commodity price volatility and its effect on private investment and public involvement.Volatility in commodity prices has been accompanied by perpetual renegotiation of contracts between private invest... read more
An argument for a major federal program to stimulate innovation in energy technology and a proposal for a policy approach to implement it.America is addicted to fossil fuels, and the environmental and geopolitical costs are mounting. A public-private program―a... read more
The transformation of sound recording into a scientific technique in the study of birdsong, as biologists turned wildlife sounds into scientific objects.Scientific observation and representation tend to be seen as exclusively visual affairs. But scientists hav... read more
Prominent scholars consider the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong and human speech and language.Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the late... read more
An examination of metaphor in poetry as a microcosm of the human imagination―a way to understand the mechanisms of creativity.In The Spider's Thread, Keith Holyoak looks at metaphor as a microcosm of the creative imagination. Holyoak, a psychologist and poet, ... read more
An analysis of the cognitive consequences of diminished contact with nature examines the relationship between how people think about the natural world and how they act on it, and how these are affected by cultural differences.Surveys show that our growing conc... read more
A provocative argument that the best way to deliver high-quality healthcare to Americans is to institute a comprehensive and fair system of rationing.Most people would agree that the healthcare system in the United States is a mess. Healthcare accounts for a l... read more
A Mouthful of Rivets is the oral history of the women who took part in World War II on the homefront. In more than one hundred interviews, Nancy Baker Wise and Christy Wise create a textured portrait of the challenges and triumphs these powerful women experien... read more
Is medical ethics in times of armed conflict identical to medical ethics in times of peace, as the World Medical Association declares? In Bioethics and Armed Conflict, the first comprehensive study of medical ethics in conventional, unconventional, and low-int... read more
Applying fresh tools from economics to explain puzzling behaviors of religious radicals: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish; violent and benign.How do radical religious sects run such deadly terrorist organizations? Hezbollah, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Taliba... read more
There are few books available that so readily capture the realities of working with deeply troubled children. Reprinting this classic work will contribute to the quality healing work to which the best practitioners are committed. As stated by Dr. Craig Latham,... read more
The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. This accessible and original monograph explores a central aspect of the imagination, the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality, and claims that imaginative thoughts are ... read more
How the interplay between government regulation and the private sector has shaped the electric industry, from its nineteenth-century origins to twenty-first-century market restructuring.For more than a century, the interplay between private, investor-owned ele... read more
An examination of the fierce disputes that arose in Britain in the decades around 1900 concerning patents for electrical power and telecommunications.Late nineteenth-century Britain saw an extraordinary surge in patent disputes over the new technologies of ele... read more
The cultural history of heredity: scholars from a range of disciplines discuss the evolution of the concept of heredity, from the Early Modern understanding of the act of "generation" to its later nineteenth-century definition as the transmission of characteri... read more
Can there be a Buddhism without karma, nirvana, and reincarnation that is compatible with the rest of knowledge?If we are material beings living in a material world―and all the scientific evidence suggests that we are―then we must find existential meaning, if ... read more
What parents need to know about the causes and treatment of children's late talking: how to avoid misdiagnoses, navigate the educational system, and more.When children are late in hitting developmental milestones, parents worry. And no delay causes more parent... read more
An exploration of the scientific limits of knowledge that challenges our deep-seated beliefs about our universe, our rationality, and ourselves.Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than explor... read more
An important Russian economist and politician takes a long view of economic history and Russia's development.It is not so easy to take the long view of socioeconomic history when you are participating in a revolution. For that reason, Russian economist Yegor G... read more
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it.“A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone intereste... read more
Elizabeth has 48 reviews
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Feb, 2024
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Nov, 2023
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