Welcome!
This is Jim's Web Site

Don't hesitate to send along comments, questions, thoughts on Cormac McCarthy's The Road or Yann Martel's Life of Pi, teaching tips, links to your favorite Wilco web sites, and lists of all the things that get on your nerves.

My next book, On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching, has just been published by Harvard University Press. You can see the cover on amazon.com by searching with my name or the title.

On this website you'll find links to my regular column for the Chronicle of Higher Education, information about speaking and media appearances, and an occasional blog about what's happening with me. You can also find links to the band for which I play keyboards.

Enjoy.

Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year
Available from Johns Hopkins University Press

Back Cover Text: In this fast-paced and lively account, Jim Lang asks the questions that confront every new faculty member: Will my students like me? Will my teaching schedule allow me time to do research and write? Is anyone still awake in the back row?

Lang shares his moments of confustion, frustration, even elation--as well as his insights into the lives and working conditions of faculty in higher education today. Engaging and accessible, Life on the Tenure Track will delight and enlighten faculty, graduate students, and administrators alike. [LEARN MORE] [BUY NOW]

Learning Sickness: A Year with Crohn's Disease
Now available from Capital Books

Back Cover Text: Diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 1996, James M. Lang spent five years trying to ignore the disease and its effects on his body and his life. In August of 2000, he began a year-long struggle with the disease, which included a week in the hospital in February of 2001. By August of 2001 he had returned to health with the help of a new medication. 'Learning Sickness' chronicles the author's battles with the disease, with doctors, with family and friends, and with the painful realization that he had to learn to live with a chronically diseased body. The book combines narratives of the author's daily life with reflections upon the nature of disease and medicine, upon the lessons we can take from illness in the human condition, and upon what it means to live with a physical self. [LEARN MORE] [BUY NOW]

News/Blog
August 19, 2008

I'm happy to report the good news I received yesterday that the first printing of On Course, my new book, has sold completely out. The publisher has ordered a second printing which will be available on September 3rd. So if you're looking for the book, just hang tight and it will be available again soon. Thanks to those of you who bought copies already! Now make sure you buy one for each of your closest friends.

School is coming soon, and I am close to finishing my summer writing project, which is a book of interconnected short stories, semi-autobiographical in nature. I hope to have a complete draft by the end of the summer, and then spend the first couple months of the fall semester making revisions. The goal is to try and get it in the hands of some publishers by the end of the calendar year.

Whatever happens with them, I have enjoyed writing this book more than anything else I have written. I'm hopeful for it, and I will keep you posted here on its progress.

Playing in the band continues as well. We have a weekly residency on Wednesday nights at a Worcester bar called Nick's, which serves German food and all varieties of alcohol. We have a new song of mine in the rotation, as well as covers by some of my musical heroes--the Pogues, Wilco, Warren Zevon, the Decemberists, and more.

That's it for now. I'll post again after the semester has started.