The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition

这本书最打动人的地方，不在它教了你多少写作技巧，而在它重新定义了'研究'这件事的价值。它反复追问：你为什么要做研究？答案不是凑够字数、应付答辩，而是发现问题、解决问题时那种真实的愉悦，是'我能改变读者想法'的满足。正因如此，它把'读者'放在了研究的核心——你的论证必须经得起陌生人的质疑，必须回答一个值得被提出的问题。多位读者提到，国内导师往往只一句'把范围缩小'就打发学生，而这本书把'运思'过程摊开给你看：从选题到问题、从问题到难题、从难题到资料，步步可查。它适合那些被' narrowing'搞得不知所措、或想系统重建研究逻辑的人。但也有人提醒：书再好，最终仍要落到扎实思考与动手写作——它给的是地图，不是替你走路。

Wayne C. Booth (1921–2005) was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Rhetoric of Fiction and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Gregory G. Colomb (1951–2011) was professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic. He is coauthor, with Wayne C. Booth and Joseph M. Williams, of the best-selling guide The Craft of Research, published by the University of Chicago Press. Joseph M. Williams (1933–2008) was professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago and the author of Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. He is also coauthor, with Wayne C. Booth and Gregory G. Colomb, of the best-selling guide The Craft of Research, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Joseph Bizup is associate professor in the Department of English at Boston University. He is coeditor of the thirteenth edition of the Norton Reader and editor of the eleventh edition of Williams’s Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. William T. FitzGerald is associate professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University–Camden.