Writing It!
The Podcast About Academics & Writing
Displaying 2 items of Writing It! with the tag "columbia university".
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Episode 84: Writing Page-Turning Banking History with Rebecca Kobrin
September 7th, 2026 | 47 mins 48 secs
antisemitism, banking history, columbia university, harvard university press, immigration history, jewish history, new york history, spatial history
We’re talking to Columbia University Professor of History Rebecca Kobrin about writing her most recent book, Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930, and about putting individuals at the center of our histories. We also talk about how leading walking tours leads to writing better histories, and Kobrin’s involvement in the online Mapping Historic New York project.
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Episode 25: The Book Seminar with Sam Freedman
June 3rd, 2024 | 57 mins 18 secs
academic press, book promotion, book proposal, columbia university, journalism, literary agent, trade press
Today, we’re speaking with the award-winning author, columnist, and professor Sam Freedman, of Columbia Journalism School, and the author, most recently, of Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (winner of the 2024 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism), about his class at Columbia School of Journalism, The Book Seminar. We talk about what Sam teaches his lucky students (this very successful Columbia seminar has been offered for over 30 years, and has resulted in over 100 published books), and about his own decades-long career as an author, and the view of the publishing industry it has provided him. We address what it means to craft a good book proposal; the importance of making the case for your book’s readership; the benefits of landing in an academic press, even if you were aiming for a trade press; how to think about the “comp. titles/authors” section of your proposal; pre-publication blurbs; pitching an agent; planning your own book promotion; and finally, why timing is sometimes everything.