The Craft of Research, Fifth Edition

A thoroughly updated edition of a beloved classic that has guided generations of researchers in conducting effective and meaningful research.

With more than a million copies sold since its first publication, The Craft of Research has helped generations of researchers at every level—from high-school students and first-year undergraduates to advanced graduate students to researchers in business and government. Conceived by seasoned researchers and educators Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, this fundamental work explains how to choose significant topics, pose genuine and productive questions, find and evaluate sources, build sound and compelling arguments, and convey those arguments effectively to others.

While preserving the book’s proven approach to the research process, as well as its general structure and accessible voice, this new edition acknowledges the many ways research is conducted and communicated today. Thoroughly revised by Joseph Bizup and William T. FitzGerald, it recognizes that research may lead to a product other than a paper—or no product at all—and includes a new chapter about effective presentations. It features fresh examples from a variety of fields that will appeal to today’s students and other readers. It also accounts for new technologies used in research and offers basic guidelines for the appropriate use of generative AI. And it ends with an expanded chapter on ethics that addresses researchers’ broader obligations to their research communities and audiences as well as systemic questions about ethical research practices.

This new edition will be welcomed by a new and more diverse generation of researchers.

Wayne C. Booth (1921–2005) was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.  His many books include The Rhetoric of Fiction and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Joseph M. Williams (1933–2008) was professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago and the author of Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. He is also coauthor, with Wayne C. Booth and Gregory G. Colomb, of the best-selling guide The Craft of Research, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Joseph Bizup is associate professor in the Department of English at Boston University. He revised the last three editions of Williams’s Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.
 

William T. FitzGerald is associate professor in the Department of English and Communication at Rutgers University–Camden and has published widely on writing and research, the rhetoric of prayer, and style.