<i>A few months ago we discussed the repulsive story of a UCLA USC professor who took full credit for a series of books that were ghostwritten, so much so that when it turned out that one of the books had “at least 95 separate passages” of plagiarism, including “long sections of a chapter on the cardiac health of giraffes.”</i><p>And then what? That's a subordinate clause, not a sentence. There's supposed to be a verb that tells us what happened.<p>Maybe this guy needs a better ghostwriter.<p>The new "Tom Clancy Command and Control" is by someone who <i>almost</i> gets Clancy's style right. But his work is still inferior to the actual books written by Tom Clancy, who's been dead for a decade.
Writing well is really difficult, so it's not at all surprising that someone who is not a professional writer gets some help. But there's a huge gap between "the concepts were all mine but I got hep with the wording" and "I signed my name twice, once on the book and once on a check".
> In contrast, Malcolm Gladwell deserves credit for producing readable prose while having his own interesting style. I doubt he uses a ghostwriter.<p>He could use a ghostresearcher. Most of his claims are rather dubious.<p>There's no shame in it: academics have grad students, who at least sometimes get a mention in the acknowledgements.
I seem to recall that some of the Stratemeyer[1] series had a bit more of the ghostwriter's personality leak through in the earlier books. I have also been told (but not confirmed myself) that they filed off most of those edges when they revised the books to remove some of the casual racism that hadn't aged well.<p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate</a>
> “Nearly all experts and celebrities use ghostwriters,”<p>Funny enough, my mind first went to Bernie Sanders' <i>My Revolution</i>.<p>Either he didn't use a ghostwriter, or the ghostwriter was Larry David doing a Bernie Sanders impression.<p>The Wikipedia entry for the book doesn't mention a ghostwriter[1]. But after reading this article, I think Wikipedia should have a policy of explicitly stating <i>so-and-so did not use a ghostwriter</i> for what are apparently edge cases.<p>Hey Wikipedians-- can you make this so?<p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Revolution" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Revolution</a>