Why Scholars Aren’t Trained To Write Trade Books

In yesterday’s post I talked about how books for a general audience — trade books — get their titles. I’ve decided that I want to say something more broadly about the nature of trade books, and I’m going to do so in a rather circuitous way, by talking about why most scholars don’t (and can’t) write them. It’s not at all a bad thing that they don’t, in my opinion. We only need so many books for non-specialists on the Big Bang, the Civil War, and the historical Jesus. All told, we probably have...