Leonard Cassuto

Welcome to my Official Website. I teach American literature at Fordham University and write about subjects ranging from crime fiction to the scientific search for room-temperature semiconductors. I also write a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education called The Graduate Adviser. You’ll find links leading to many of my articles on this site. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

My latest book

The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education

My new book, The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press later this year. My coauthor, former foundation and university president Robert Weisbuch, and I argue that graduate school should be student-centered and career-diverse. Grad programs should prepare students for all of the jobs that they can get (not just professorships), and we give examples of how they can do that. You can buy the book here.

“Cassuto and Weisbuch remind us that all reform efforts have histories, including the one to reform US doctoral education. The New PhD recounts that history and presents a challenging set of options for the future. This book is a must read, one to be argued with, embraced, refined, but not ignored.” — Earl Lewis, Professor / Founding Director of the Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan

The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It

Published in September 2015 by Harvard University Press. You can order it here.

I discuss the book in this video:

The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It

Other recent books:

The Cambridge History of The American Novel

Edited by me, Clare Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss, this literary history traces the American novel from its emergence in the late eighteenth century to its diverse incarnations in the multi-ethnic, multi-media culture of the present. This book was published in 2011.

“… an innovative approach that is bound to prove as stimulating as the best of American fiction already does.” — Contemporary Review

Buy the book.

The Cambridge Companion to Baseball

Winner of a 2012 Book Award from the North American Society of Sports Historians (NASSH).

Here’s a video of me talking about the book:

Buy the book.

Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories

Published by Columbia University Press, Hard-Boiled Sentimentality was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity awards, and named one of the Ten Best mystery and crime books of 2008 by the Los Angeles Times (the only nonfiction book on the list). Read more about the book.

“A clear-eyed, original, and important study that I found endlessly fascinating. Hard-Boiled Sentimentality is also as well-written and compelling as a good crime novel.” — Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Paranoia, High Crimes, and Power Play

Buy the book.