The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook

A practical guide for scholars ready to write beyond the academy.

Public scholarship should not be reserved for celebrity intellectuals or tenured faculty at elite institutions. It's designed for anyone who wants to share their academic work and engage with the public beyond the classroom or conference panel. In The Public Scholar, historian and journalist David M. Perry offers a clear, candid, and practical guide to writing for public audiences.

Rather than debating whether academics should write for the public, Perry focuses on the practical details of how to approach public scholarship. How do you pitch a piece to an editor? What counts as evidence in a 900-word op-ed? When should you follow or ignore the rules of the genre? And what happens once your piece is out in the world? Covering the full life cycle of public writing, Perry walks readers through pitching, writing, editing, publishing, building a platform, and navigating the real-world risks and rewards that come with stepping into the public sphere. As the author of multiple best-selling books and over five hundred essays, Perry shares insights that are direct, hard-won, and refreshingly honest. He explains how public-facing work can support an academic career, how it can provide leverage for tenure and promotion, and, importantly, how it can also live outside traditional institutional paths.

Perry's accessible approach invites scholars at all stages to consider what public engagement might look like in their own lives. Whether you're hoping to write for major newspapers, connect with communities beyond your discipline, or simply make your research more visible, The Public Scholar offers the right tools to help you get started.

David M. Perry is the associate director of undergraduate studies in history at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. The author of Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, he is the coauthor of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe and Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe.