DESIGN DISCOURSE: COMPOSING AND REVISING PROGRAMS IN PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL WRITING addresses the complexities of developing professional and technical writing programs. The essays in the collection offer reflections on efforts to bridge two cultures-what the editors characterize as the "art and science of writing"-often by addressing explicitly the tensions between them. DESIGN DISCOURSE offers insights into the high-stakes decisions made by program designers as they seek to "function at the intersection of the practical and the abstract, the human and the technical." Contributors include Diana L. Ashe, Brian D. Ballentine, Kelly Belanger, Julianne Couch, Anthony Di Renzo, James M. Dubinsky, Jude Edminster, David Franke, Gary Griswold, Dev Hathaway, Brent Henze, Colin K. Keeney, Michael Knievel, Carla Kungl, Carol Lipson, Andrew Mara, Jim Nugent, Anne Parker, Jonathan Pitts, Alex Reid, Colleen A. Reilly, Wendy B. Sharer, Christine Stebbins, and Janice Tovey. DAVID FRANKE teaches at SUNY Cortland, where he served as director of the professional writing program. He founded and directs the Seven Valleys Writing Project at SUNY Cortland, a site of the National Writing Project. ALEX REID teaches at the University at Buffalo. His book, THE TWO VIRTUALS: NEW MEDIA AND COMPOSITION, received honorable mention for the W. Ross Winterowd Award for Best Book in Composition Theory (2007), and his blog, Digital Digs (alex-reid.net), received the John Lovas Memorial Academic Weblog award for contributions to the field of rhetoric and composition (2008). ANTHONY DI RENZO teaches business and technical writing at Ithaca College, where he developed a Professional Writing concentration for its BA in Writing. His scholarship concentrates on the historical relationship between professional writing and literature.

Anthony Di Renzo makes available for the first time since their original publication some eighty years ago a collection of fifteen of Sinclair Lewis's early business stories.

Among Lewis's funniest satires, these stories introduce the characters, themes, and techniques that would evolve into "Babbitt. "Each selection reflects the commercial culture of Lewis's day, particularly Reason Why advertising, self-help manuals, and the business fiction of the "Saturday Evening Post. "The stories were published between October 1915 and May 1921 (nine in the "Saturday Evening Post, "four in "Metropolitan Magazine, "one in "Harper's Magazine, "and one in "American Magazine)."

Because some things have not changed in the American workplace since Lewis's day, these highly entertaining and unflinchingly accurate office satires will appeal to the fans of "Dilbert "and "The Drew Carey Show. "In a sense, they provide lay readers with an archaeology of white-collar angst and regimentation. The horror and absurdities of contemporary corporate downsizing already existed in the office of the Progressive Era. For an audience contemplating the death of the American middle class, Lewis's stories provide an important retrospective on earlier times and a preliminary autopsy on the American dream.

Appearing just in time to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of "Babbitt, "this collection rescues Lewis's best early short fiction from obscurity, provides extensive information about his formative years in advertising and public relations, and analyzes both his genius for marketing and his carefully cultivated persona as the Great Salesman of American letters.