New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication represents the most important collection of writings about technical communications ever compiled. Focusing on a wide range of theoretical and practical issues, these essays reflect the rigor, vitality, and interdisciplinary nature of modern technical communications. This represents a collection of the very best scholarly work being done.

Contemporary disaster investigation reports into the Shuttle, Three Mile Island, or the World Trade Centre did not happen by chance, but were the result of an evolution of the discourse communities involved with investigating technological accidents. The relationships of private companies, coroners, outside experts, and government investigators all had to be developed and experimented with before a genre of investigation reports could exist. This book is the story of the evolution of these investigation discourse communities in published reports written between 1833 and 1879. Using the...