A cross-disciplinary collection of 20 essays describing the journey to public scholarship, exploring the pleasures and perils associated with breaching the town-gown divide.

• Includes contributions from departments of geography, comparative literature, sociology, communications, history, English, public health, and biology
• Discusses their efforts to reach beyond the academy and to make their ideas and research broadly accessible to a wider audience
• Opens the way for a new kind of democratic politics—one based on grounded concepts and meaningful social participation
• Includes deeply personal accounts about the journey to becoming a public scholar and to intervening politically in the world, while remaining within a university system
• Provides a broad prescription for social change, both within and outside the university