This book addresses the problem of the future of Germanics as a field of study at colleges and universities in the United States. It is noted that the study of Germanics has been losing tens of thousands of students for the past 25 years, that this slide downward is no longer attracting enough attention from the Germanics community, and if it continues, the field will die. First, the book describes the decline in German studies and the response thus far illustrating the seriousness of the crisis. Then it offers a general critique of the field of German studies and proposes an agenda for revitalizing the field of Germanics involving changes in the academic department, considerations in the training of graduate students in German studies, a review of the lessons learned from the teaching of business German in Mississippi universities, some local options for raising enrollment, and the need for more options for teachers in German language classrooms. An appendix contains the numbers of American and European-born professors of German at specific American colleges and universities. Contains 114 references and an index. (GLR)