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Twisted Rails, Sunken Ships: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth Century Steamboat and Railroad Accident Investigation Reports, 1833-1879 R. John Brockmann. 2005. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. [ISBN: 0-89503-291-0. 273 pages, including index. $58.95.]
A current academic buzzword is genre, referring to particular types of communications such as proposals, reports, manuals, and so on. One particular type of report that frequently receives attention in the press is the investigative report. The two Space Shuttle disasters led to several reports in which, presumably, objective experts analyzed what went wrong and why. Although as a genre, investigative reports represent a relatively small percentage of communications that technical communicators work with, they are a significant part of determining what happened when disaster strikes. They are also key to public confidence in the technology involved.
John Brockmann takes...