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Foss and Waters do an excellent job of guiding the reader through the nuts and bolts (tasks) of writing a dissertation. Super helpful when you have shorter periods of time to move forward in your work and assume that you can't move forward much (but indeed you can) or feel 'lost'. I have recommended it to my classmates and also to folks who struggle with finding the time to write in general.
This book was recommended to me by a professor. Great tips that shave unnecessary time off of your writing process. At the time of this review I haven't read the whole thing but I have read the section on writing the literature review. That section alone was AMAZING. I have and would recommend this book to anyone. I've read other books about writing a thesis and dissertation and they don't even come close to what's in this book.
I agree with all of the positive feedback this book has received (it's accessible, well-written, loaded with valuable information) and suggest that it be included by other professors in their graduate level methods classes. It will make your job so much easier and students will love you for it.
This book gives solid direction and easy to implement guidelines for getting a dissertation completed. I recommend this book highly to advisors of doctoral students and doctoral students themselves. The journey to a dissertation can often stop at the point of ABD. The literature review section is especially helpful and would be of benefit to professors who are teaching students to create a comprehensive review. This should be required reading for doctoral students as advising is often hard to come by and isn't ever this concise.
Regardless it is impossible to completely separate the dissertation process from the foundation on which it is based - soft or hard science research. The analogy of a road trip was lame and stretched at points. In my opinion, hard science research has it own premises, pitfalls, and problems. It would have been more appropriate to simply entitle the book - Your Dissertation in 29 Steps.If your dissertation's field of study is focused on the "soft" sciences like social sciences, then the book might be useful. If your dissertation's field of study is focused on the "hard" sciences like physics (or computer science), then it's going to be significantly less helpful.The book focuses on the "process" of writing a dissertation. Hard science specific issues were given short rift. This problem was aggravated by all the dissertations snips/examples found throughout the book being strictly soft science based.
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