Northwestern Professors who authored their own textbooks

[StreamsOfWhiskey]

Not exactly teaching from his own textbook, but I took a literature class from Alfred Appel who taught from the version of "Lolita" that he had annotated (he was an expert on Nobokov and took a class from him as an undergrad). Appel liked to joke that critics thought he didn't exist because his initials were AA, which some took to be a wink to HH-- Humbert Humbert-- the central character of the book.

I had a lot more profs teaching from their own textbooks in law school.

 

[stpaulcat]

Robert Gordon had a fine textbook on macroeconomics, and a lousy toupee.

I look at your sig pic and wonder why you would be bothered by hair of any kind wherever it is.

 

[Eurocat]

Edward Sidlow. Poli Sci (he was great, left to become a dean at Loyola, now at Eastern Michigan biding his time, but he was great).

 

[Alan Smithee]

Not exactly teaching from his own textbook, but I took a literature class from Alfred Appel who taught from the version of "Lolita" that he had annotated (he was an expert on Nobokov and took a class from him as an undergrad). Appel liked to joke that critics thought he didn't exist because his initials were AA, which some took to be a wink to HH-- Humbert Humbert-- the central character of the book.

I had a lot more profs teaching from their own textbooks in law school.

Lol. I took a different class from Alfred Appel and he used his own book (a different one) in that class, too.

Not quite in the same category, but I remember that one of my political science texts was written by Graham Spanier, before he went into the business of covering for pedophiles.

 

[Alaskawildkat]

A couple of History prof.s come to mind:

Robert Lerner: Medieval History;

James Sheridan: Chinese History, 20th Century.

Wow, I completely forgot Francis Hsu, author of "Under the Ancestors' Shadow" which was a featured book in his class on Chinese Culture.

 

[NU 71 72 74]

I guess this is on topic given the "student" in student athlete emphasis given at Northwestern. Northwestern has been among the schools where one can attend a class in which the textbook was authored by the professor.

This point came to mind as I was sorting through some of my old textbooks to include one written by Northwestern Professor Robert C. King as pictured below. (Dr. King taught at NU from 1956 until he retired in 2000. I was saddened to learn he just passed away last year.)

Others who come to mind? (Another I recall was Fred Basolo who taught Chemistry and others in the Sociology Department such as Bernard Beck, Charles Moskos, and Raymond Mack who used papers they had published.)

Going back and reading the poem that prefaced the work gave cause for reflection. As suggested by the poem written decades before Dr. King's passing, he lives on through his own children.

Edited to add: Here is some additional info about Professor King from a tribute that was posted last year at the time of his passing:

"We, as former students, remember Bob’s lab as a hub of exciting research and cheerfulness. Bob was always the first to arrive for work. Long before even the earliest risers amongst us entered the lab, he would have been at his desk for an hour or more, and one would open the lab door to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, with the sound of Bach, Beethoven, or Stravinsky in the background. There was an ethnically diverse population of students and research associates, and his children were frequent visitors. There were parties to celebrate publication of papers and funding of grants. Bob loved to travel, presenting papers and spending sabbaticals abroad. It was in Korea that he met his future wife and loving companion, Suja."

http://genestogenomes.org/in-memorium-robert-c-king-1928-2017/

I still have Dr. King's textbook. What a nice human being. He always had time to meet with me back in the late 60's.

.02 and, Go Cats !!

 

[iskaboo]

When I was at Medill one of the standard texts was "Interpretative Reporting," written by Medill Professor Curtis MacDougall. It actually was a good text, first published in the '30s, and I believe it went to eight editions. While an exceptionally intelligent guy, MacDougall was about a year from retirement when I was at Medill and seemed to be mailing it in. I had him for an editorial writing course, and his grad assistant graded just about all the papers. MacDougall was a staunch liberal and ran for Congress that year against GOP incumbent Phil Crane. It was the height of the Vietnam war demonstrations, and he had a lot of support on campus, but the North Shore was very Republican at the time and Crane trounced him.

I arrived at Northwestern soon after Curtis McDougall retired, but “Interpretive Reporting” was my textbook when I took Reporting I with Ben Baldwin in 1974 (Bill Jauss of the Tribune was my ‘lab’ instructor). I still have a copy on my bookshelf, and I used it when I taught a reporting class for the Evening Division in the early ‘80s.

 

[SchizoCat1]

A couple of History prof.s come to mind:

Robert Lerner: Medieval History;

James Sheridan: Chinese History, 20th Century.

Right. I remember Lerner had a very good introductory medieval soft cover book.

 

[iskaboo]

Right. I remember Lerner had a very good introductory medieval soft cover book.

More about Lerner: https://www.history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/emeriti/robert-lerner.html

 

[EvanstonCat]

Not sure if I said this before (too lazy to check page 1) - but Wally Hopp and Mark Spearman on Factory Physics.

 

[pawildcat]

I arrived at Northwestern soon after Curtis McDougall retired, but “Interpretive Reporting” was my textbook when I took Reporting I with Ben Baldwin in 1974 (Bill Jauss of the Tribune was my ‘lab’ instructor). I still have a copy on my bookshelf, and I used it when I taught a reporting class for the Evening Division in the early ‘80s.

Ben Baldwin was my adviser and I had a science writing class with him. As you know since you had him, he was very old school. I remember one time he'd set up a field trip to the Fermi lab outside Chicago for the science writing class, and those of us with cars were to drive our fellow students there. Well, the guy who was supposed to be navigating for me fell asleep and I took a wrong turn that had me heading out to Aurora. Another guy who was driving ran out of gas, and the result of all this was that most of our group was late. All of this got back to Ben, of course, and he went on a truly epic rant. "Who the hell runs out of gas? What a stupid thing to do," is the mild version of how he opened up on the one guy, and that was before he got started on me. We meekly took it, of course, since it actually was our fault we were late. But most of us appreciated and liked Ben because you did always know where you stood with him and he was a good teacher — also an easy guy to get along with when you didn't piss him off. He grew up in East St. Louis and always tried to sneak a couple of non-Ivy types into the Medill classes because he appreciated that not everyone started out with the silver spoon. I suspect he was a large part of the reason I got admitted from Shippensburg. I thanked him, but probably not enough.

 

[pawildcat]

I guess this is on topic given the "student" in student athlete emphasis given at Northwestern. Northwestern has been among the schools where one can attend a class in which the textbook was authored by the professor.

This point came to mind as I was sorting through some of my old textbooks to include one written by Northwestern Professor Robert C. King as pictured below. (Dr. King taught at NU from 1956 until he retired in 2000. I was saddened to learn he just passed away last year.)

Others who come to mind? (Another I recall was Fred Basolo who taught Chemistry and others in the Sociology Department such as Bernard Beck, Charles Moskos, and Raymond Mack who used papers they had published.)

Going back and reading the poem that prefaced the work gave cause for reflection. As suggested by the poem written decades before Dr. King's passing, he lives on through his own children.

Edited to add: Here is some additional info about Professor King from a tribute that was posted last year at the time of his passing:

"We, as former students, remember Bob’s lab as a hub of exciting research and cheerfulness. Bob was always the first to arrive for work. Long before even the earliest risers amongst us entered the lab, he would have been at his desk for an hour or more, and one would open the lab door to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, with the sound of Bach, Beethoven, or Stravinsky in the background. There was an ethnically diverse population of students and research associates, and his children were frequent visitors. There were parties to celebrate publication of papers and funding of grants. Bob loved to travel, presenting papers and spending sabbaticals abroad. It was in Korea that he met his future wife and loving companion, Suja."

http://genestogenomes.org/in-memorium-robert-c-king-1928-2017/

This thread has been fun, Alaska. Thanks for putting it up.

 

[pittcat90]

Not exactly teaching from his own textbook, but I took a literature class from Alfred Appel who taught from the version of "Lolita" that he had annotated (he was an expert on Nobokov and took a class from him as an undergrad). Appel liked to joke that critics thought he didn't exist because his initials were AA, which some took to be a wink to HH-- Humbert Humbert-- the central character of the book.

I had a lot more profs teaching from their own textbooks in law school.

I had Appel also. I remember that he joked that the picture of Nabokov on the back of the book was actually one of him (Appel) "when I was older than I am now."

 

[cat inkansas]

I guess this is on topic given the "student" in student athlete emphasis given at Northwestern. Northwestern has been among the schools where one can attend a class in which the textbook was authored by the professor.

This point came to mind as I was sorting through some of my old textbooks to include one written by Northwestern Professor Robert C. King as pictured below. (Dr. King taught at NU from 1956 until he retired in 2000. I was saddened to learn he just passed away last year.)

Others who come to mind? (Another I recall was Fred Basolo who taught Chemistry and others in the Sociology Department such as Bernard Beck, Charles Moskos, and Raymond Mack who used papers they had published.)

Going back and reading the poem that prefaced the work gave cause for reflection. As suggested by the poem written decades before Dr. King's passing, he lives on through his own children.

Edited to add: Here is some additional info about Professor King from a tribute that was posted last year at the time of his passing:

"We, as former students, remember Bob’s lab as a hub of exciting research and cheerfulness. Bob was always the first to arrive for work. Long before even the earliest risers amongst us entered the lab, he would have been at his desk for an hour or more, and one would open the lab door to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, with the sound of Bach, Beethoven, or Stravinsky in the background. There was an ethnically diverse population of students and research associates, and his children were frequent visitors. There were parties to celebrate publication of papers and funding of grants. Bob loved to travel, presenting papers and spending sabbaticals abroad. It was in Korea that he met his future wife and loving companion, Suja."

http://genestogenomes.org/in-memorium-robert-c-king-1928-2017/

Phil Kotler, Marketing.

 

[NJCat]

Phil Kotler, Marketing.

He wrote a classic Harvard Business Review article on ending the war between Sales and Marketing. Bright guy.

http://www.yuswohady.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Ending-War-Between-Sales-Marketing-Kotler.pdf

 

[Gladeskat]

One thing I enjoyed at my small state school was that we probably had more emphasis on teaching than research at that time, so we had few visiting professors and teaching assistants handling classes. My brother ran into the TA thing a couple of times in his large lecture classes at Penn State when he'd get guys from India or Southeast Asia with heavy accents — smart young men, but not always easy for someone used to American-inflected English to understand.

That happened to me at Northwestern. I took cell biology with "Dr. Johnson". Dr. Johnson turned out to be Dr. Johnson's Chinese wife, an adjunct prof at NU. It was rough. Half the class walked out disgusted on the first day.

 

[stpaulcat]

That happened to me at Northwestern. I took cell biology with "Dr. Johnson". Dr. Johnson turned out to be Dr. Johnson's Chinese wife, an adjunct prof at NU. It was rough. Half the class walked out disgusted on the first day.

She was cutting edge. Chinese could represent half of the current student body now. No wonder students don't show up for football.

 

[eastbaycat99]

The semi-legendary (at least in the math department) Meyer Dwass, whose Probability and Statististics was used for a generation in the C-30 sequence. I had him for a D level multivariate Stats course, and think he was a better teacher than writer. He did reference football in that class, pointing out that the 2-dimensional projection of a football perpendicularly passing through a plane was indistinguishable from a basketball doing the Same for a range of values, a life lesson I have often used.

A legend which may or may not be true is that he came into a new instructor’s lecture in the mid 60’s at Tech dressed in overalls carrying a tool box, saying he was there to fix the sink. He purportedly worked loudly, but shouted out answers to questions that stumped the class, leading the green instructor to marvel at how even the maintenance staff at NU was smart.

 

[iskaboo]

Ben Baldwin was my adviser and I had a science writing class with him. As you know since you had him, he was very old school. I remember one time he'd set up a field trip to the Fermi lab outside Chicago for the science writing class, and those of us with cars were to drive our fellow students there. Well, the guy who was supposed to be navigating for me fell asleep and I took a wrong turn that had me heading out to Aurora. Another guy who was driving ran out of gas, and the result of all this was that most of our group was late. All of this got back to Ben, of course, and he went on a truly epic rant. "Who the hell runs out of gas? What a stupid thing to do," is the mild version of how he opened up on the one guy, and that was before he got started on me. We meekly took it, of course, since it actually was our fault we were late. But most of us appreciated and liked Ben because you did always know where you stood with him and he was a good teacher — also an easy guy to get along with when you didn't piss him off. He grew up in East St. Louis and always tried to sneak a couple of non-Ivy types into the Medill classes because he appreciated that not everyone started out with the silver spoon. I suspect he was a large part of the reason I got admitted from Shippensburg. I thanked him, but probably not enough.

I ended my time at Medill as Ben Baldwin's graduate assistant, and I can tell you he was a peach of a guy. He took the time to correspond with me during the early days of my journalism career.

But, you are correct: he could be very tough if you screwed up. I learned a lot from Ben Baldwin, even if he did not write a textbook.

 

[Eurocat]

I was his RA for a few years in the early-90’s, and that never crossed my mind!

Dave Revsine’s dad Larry taught with his own accounting textbook in Kellogg until he passed away. I went to school with Dave’s older sibling at GBN. Nice family.

Holy moly, I had no idea. Dave is (was) a classmate and a friend, I had no idea he was purple blooded in that way. I vaguely remember meeting mom and dad at some student affair, I just thought they were purple because of their kid (Dave). Great folks, bleed purple. Dave is a really nice guy. Ask anyone WNUR cira late 80s. Good folks.

I was his RA for a few years in the early-90’s, and that never crossed my mind!

Dave Revsine’s dad Larry taught with his own accounting textbook in Kellogg until he passed away. I went to school with Dave’s older sibling at GBN. Nice family.

 

[NU Houston]

She was cutting edge. Chinese could represent half of the current student body now. No wonder students don't show up for football.

Ugh. Come on now.

 

[jactheko]

There have been pluses and minus. Back in the day Ray Billigton was a great lecturer and his book (History of the American Frontier was excellent). But my chemistry withe Dr. Sellwood was another story. Of course Billington's course was fondly known as Cowboys and Indians.

 

[TXnumbCAT]

As an Industrial Engineering undergrad, I had the chance to take a class taught by Prof. Mark Spearman using a pre-publication version of a textbook he co-authored with NU Prof. Wallace Hopp. It was one of those photocopied and bound "books" you'd buy at the copy shop. That textbook has become very widely used: Factory Physics. It was great to be one of the first to use the book, as it was quite innovative.

 

[pdp98]

Art in History by Larry Silver. One of my favorite classes at NU. Took it my senior year, then backpacked around Europe that following summer and saw many of the works he taught us about.

 

[EvanstonCat]

She was cutting edge. Chinese could represent half of the current student body now. No wonder students don't show up for football.

Asians are less than 20% of the student body. If we didn't have reverse quotas, like schools like Cal, Michigan and Iowa, then you might be right.

 

[NUMBfan]

I ended my time at Medill as Ben Baldwin's graduate assistant, and I can tell you he was a peach of a guy. He took the time to correspond with me during the early days of my journalism career.

But, you are correct: he could be very tough if you screwed up. I learned a lot from Ben Baldwin, even if he did not write a textbook.

Baldwin's son and I were close friends as undergrads. We were classmates and both in NUMB. His son, Mark, has gone on to a distinguished career as a newspaper editor. Being the son of a faculty member, he was always plugged into all things Northwestern in ways that I wasn't.

Mark Baldwin and I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend the 1995 Rose Bowl together. One of the best times I've ever had with one of my NU friends! (And yes, Musso's knee was DOWN.)

 

[ricko654321]

He was a great prof!

I regret to say that Prof Gordon was the first time I ever fell asleep in a class... he seemed like a nice enough guy and smart, but intro Econ was a pretty easy / boring class and just in that enormous lecture hall... I started to doze off. Unfortunately once the seal was broken, it became an easier thing to do.

 

[BorisSutherland]

I don't like when a professor wants his students to buy and learn from his own book. That's very selfish in my opinion, because maybe his book is trash and I want to buy a real book written by a real professor. I just don't care now, I just buy the books that I find, and think that are better, you can see Chegg books review, and you will understand why it is better to buy books that you prefer and not the ones that your professor tell you to buy.

 

[FanatiCat]

As someone who worked briefly with Wilcox and Follett, the elementary and high school division of the Follett Corporation, I can confirm that the copyright dates of college textbooks are constantly changing, usually about every two years. I'm sure many students notice this. Follett's college division operates dozens of college bookstores. At W & F, our main task was to buy used texts for resale to elementary and high schools. Students who paid high prices for college texts, which changed copyrights much more frequently, were often outraged at the prices Follett reps offered them for their used texts. But from the company's standpoint it made little sense to offer a high price for a text they might not sell next year. A new college copyright might have little difference from the previous book other than the changed copyright date, but students nonetheless are asked to buy the new edition. It's especially egregious when you're taking a subject such as Shakespeare as it's been a while since the bard has written any new plays.

My bio textbook at NU, which was a new edition that year, had an incorrect Punnett square as one of the first few figures. My friend had the previous edition that had the same exact figure, which was correct. Since there was no reason to even touch that figure in editing, we suspected that they were introducing errors so they could correct them in another new edition!

 

[AZCat]

Irving Rein made all students in the School of Speech (now Scool of Communications), who took his classes to buy his book, Rudy's Red Wagon.

​

It is actually a pretty good book. Irving took a Sabbatical & got hired at Nickey Chevrolet (Nickey Nickey Nickey Nickey Chevrolet - Home of the Backwards K) as a salesman & in no time became the #1 salesman.

"How big is the trunk?"
"I could give you the cubic feet, but why don't you climb in and see for yourself."

Rein was famous for forcing one to "grade grub." He would give you 2 grades lower than you actually deserved on your assignment, and then you were expected to schedule an office appointment with him and offer a persuasive argument why you deserved a better grade.

A pain to be sure, but all part of his teaching technique.

 

[Titanium999]

I guess this is on topic given the "student" in student athlete emphasis given at Northwestern. Northwestern has been among the schools where one can attend a class in which the textbook was authored by the professor.

This point came to mind as I was sorting through some of my old textbooks to include one written by Northwestern Professor Robert C. King as pictured below. (Dr. King taught at NU from 1956 until he retired in 2000. I was saddened to learn he just passed away last year.)

Others who come to mind? (Another I recall was Fred Basolo who taught Chemistry and others in the Sociology Department such as Bernard Beck, Charles Moskos, and Raymond Mack who used papers they had published.)

Going back and reading the poem that prefaced the work gave cause for reflection. As suggested by the poem written decades before Dr. King's passing, he lives on through his own children.

Edited to add: Here is some additional info about Professor King from a tribute that was posted last year at the time of his passing:

"We, as former students, remember Bob’s lab as a hub of exciting research and cheerfulness. Bob was always the first to arrive for work. Long before even the earliest risers amongst us entered the lab, he would have been at his desk for an hour or more, and one would open the lab door to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, with the sound of Bach, Beethoven, or Stravinsky in the background. There was an ethnically diverse population of students and research associates, and his children were frequent visitors. There were parties to celebrate publication of papers and funding of grants. Bob loved to travel, presenting papers and spending sabbaticals abroad. It was in Korea that he met his future wife and loving companion, Suja."

http://genestogenomes.org/in-memorium-robert-c-king-1928-2017/

Some old dude,about 80,authored my econ text book. So did my Socio Econ professor

 

[Dragon_Buck]

Phil Kotler, Marketing.

This is the King. While he has written many other books, his Marketing Management is now in like 16th edition - I had him as teacher with a much earlier version... but he’s still the father of the “four P’s” of marketing - I worked with numerous brand management people (from dozens of schools) at Procter & Gamble who said their first marketing class had used his book.

I also had a Finance teacher use his own “Futures and Options Markets” paperback textbook.