A review of the accidental scholar: SAGE 2014, sage response, Pro ed. 2014 (ISBN-10: 935150039X ISBN-13: 978-9351500391) by Jagish N. Sheth, and John Yow

The ‘Accidental Scholar’ is a book that reflects on the challenges and rewards of an academic life by narrating the life journey of a marketing professor, Jagdish N Sheth. It echoes the excitements and anxieties faced by every academic who undertakes a journey of personal research as a lone traveller and who aims to be recognised as a specialist in one very niche topic. Every chapter of the fourteen chapters in the book outlines a different facet of academic life and provides lessons for management of each to its audience. The book recounts how a young man who wanted to become an entrepreneur became an academic and pushed the boundaries of existing knowledge with several scholarly contributions to the discipline of marketing. Flexibility is highlighted as an important trait for academics who aim to contribute through publications because the expectation of getting published is very low. Therefore, a recommendation this book makes to scholars looking for opportunities is that they should treat themselves as brands and also try to develop flexibility so that they can follow opportunities into producing multi-disciplinary outputs through networking. Reading this book will be a very pleasant route down memory lane for established scholars and will also be of interest to struggling, budding and future academics.