Book Review 

Choose a book that is related to your research topic.  For a useful review, choose a monograph, not a book of collected essays or articles.   Something under 300 pages will be easier to review than a longer work.  For this review, I would prefer that you choose a work of scholarship (with citation to sources and bibliography), not a journalist's account, a novel, or some other non-scholarly work.   Please discuss your selection with me, in person or via email.  I reserve the right to veto your selection if it does not meet the criteria outlined here.        

For a scholarly book:

1. The paper should be 5-6 pages in length. It will begin, as a book review does, with a full citation for the book. After this, you need to use footnotes only when directly quoting, or when referring to other works.

2. The analysis should clearly explain the book's topic and thesis, as well as its scope. Remember, I probably have not read the book you have selected; it is your job to make entirely clear to me what the book is discussing.

3. Your analysis should include a critical appraisal of the argument. This should include:

--an assessment of how well the argument is made (e.g. organization, logic)

--an evaluation of the kinds of sources that the author used

--an indication and evaluation of the methodologies and theories employed

--a comparison of this piece to other relevant studies on the topic, if you have read any

--your analysis of the book's strengths and weaknesses and its use to your own research

Suggestions:

1. Look up reviews of this book. This will allow you to consider the evaluations, criticisms and comments of other historians concerning the work you are analyzing. Please attach photocopies of any reviews that you read.

Where can you find reviews? Look online at American History and Life, Historical Abstracts, World Cat, BookRevDigst and other indexes that you can find on the Coe Library list of indexes.

You can look in hard copies of indexes for citations of reviews [this is especially useful for earlier works], in the Book Review Index; American History and Life, Historical Abstracts, and the Women's Review of Books.

You can search for on-line reviews by historians at h-net book reviews: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/