Format and Style
– Length should between 3 and 5 pages, but no more than 7.
– 12 pt. standard font (like Times New Roman)
– Double-spaced
– 1 inch margins
BOOK REVIEW GUIDELINES
Assignment
You are not merely repeating what the book says, but you are critiquing its scholarship: examining the book’s sources, analyzing the book’s arguments, and determining if the author has written a well-constructed and argued book.
In a book review, your primary focus is on analyzing the author, the book, and its argument. Therefore, describing/summarizing the content (i.e., the supporting evidence and narrative) is important but clearly a secondary focus. The main purpose of a book review is to analyze and examine how the author makes an argument/thesis and how the author supports that argument/thesis with logic and evidence.
Does the work’s argument and supporting evidence “hold” or “work” together? Generally, in addition to briefly describing the book’s content, a good book review will consist of the following four things:
1. What is the author’s purpose in writing their work? What does the author hope to accomplish or prove? What historical issue or controversy does the author address? What is the author’s attitude/perspective on the subject matter? Does the author rely on any particular method or theoretical approach?
2. What sources does the author utilize? Is this work, for example, an interpretative essay that reflects on historiographical or theoretical issues, a survey that synthesizes secondary works produced by other researchers, or is it a monograph based on the author’s original research into primary sources? Do not simply list or count the sources; instead, state their general nature, distinguishing between primary and secondary, manuscript and printed/published sources. Are the sources reliable? Is there an over-reliance on certain sources? Did the author not consult certain sources?
3. Deconstruction of the work, breaking it down into its component parts/chapters, summarizing the author’s argument in each of the components, and describe (briefly) the supporting evidence presented in each. You should, at the end of this analysis, be able to again summarize and judge the book’s main conclusions.
4. Finally, how does this work fit in to other material covered in the course, our classroom discussions, and/ or your personal research and knowledge? What are your thoughts about the work?
ScholarMatic: Explanation & Answer
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