The purpose of this essay is to evaluate how effectively you can read the work of another person, and how effectively you can bring together your own ideas about it. Can you see what s/he is doing? And why? And can you specify in which ways the author succeeds and/or fails? Can you specify what the book does and doesn't do?
    In a proper review, you dig deeply into the text to uncover and evaluate the author's intentions, point of view, and approach: the spoken and unspoken assumptions upon which the decisions of the writer were based; the organizing ideas, concepts and claims. Remember that all writings begin as a blank sheet of paper, and the act of writing --of pulling one's thoughts together-- is a long series of choices and decisions.
    In asking you to review a book, we are not asking you to do a "book report", as some students know it. That is, we're not asking you just to repeat what the book says. You will do some of that, but you need to go further. A review is an intense dismantling and evaluation of the book. The model for reviews of this sort is to be found in any academic journal (though professional reviews aren't always good...). Your review will differ in two major ways from professional reviews: 1) you will have more space than most journals allow; and 2) you are presumably not a "professional" on the topic of your book and the other literature on that topic: therefore you can't be expected to view the book in the context of other work done in the region or on the topic.
    So what can you do?
    Simple: you can read the book intensively from your own place, pick it over, find out how it's organized, what its argument is, how evidence is selected and presented, and thus how the argument is built and supported. And you can then evaluate it in its own terms as successful in certain ways and unconvincing in whatever other ways. What is the book's internal logic? Does it follow through on the claims the author makes for it? If not, how not? Etc.
    You are an "intelligent reader", the audience for which academics write.  If you can't follow the book and make sense of it when you apply yourself, likely the work has problems. But the purpose of a critical reading is to try to explain how a book fails, how it succeeds, how it defines its territory: not just to claim that it does these things.
    Treat your review as a short essay. It should be concise and well-organized, and should have a beginning, a central development section, and a conclusion (like any essay, it's an attempt to say something in particular).
    Like all written work, a review should be honest: don't pretend to be someone you're not. Write in your own voice. For most of you, the material read will be new and unfamiliar in some important ways.  In general, reviews should not include: a list of chapter titles, etc.; long or numerous quotations (although brief quotes or quoted key phrases and words may be efficient, revealing, and necessary); citations or references cited (unless you do make use of secondary sources, which is not required).
    The best reviews are written by reviewers who: 1) understand what the work says and how it says it, and 2) realize clearly what the work does not say, what it is not, and what it might have been (for better or worse). It is these latter perceptions which test the imagination and give form to the appreciation: in them lie the reviewer's contribution.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A. Purpose, writer's intention
  -why was it written? what does the author intend to do? (see esp. title, preface, intro, conclusion)
  -writer's claims for his/her interpretation/analysis?
  -who are the intended audience?

B. Contents and organization
  -type of work? e.g.:            descriptive (impressions, moods, word pictures)
                                                narrative (organized as a story with characters)
                                                expositive or theoretical (presenting an argument or side of a debate)
  -sub-divisions of work?       (sections ordered by topic, chronology, steps of an argument?)
  -reasons for chosen sequence of presentation?
  -author's major ideas and key words?
  -how are ideas/impressions/analyses developed?
  -sources and kinds of evidence?      (kinds of evidence not appealed to?)

C. Authority, persuasiveness
  -author's ideas?          key words, terms, concepts clearly defined or developed?
                                        used with consistency?
                                        internal consistency among concepts?
  -how well are ideas developed?              degree of thoroughness?
                                                                        relation to evidence/description developed?
  -material not discussed/described/analyzed?       relation to author's intention/audience?
                                                                                        oversight, bias, intentional omission, length constraints?
                                                                                        are the omissions significant?
  -author's qualifications?     reputation, occupation, experience, age, other work, etc.

D. Style
  -author's presence in work?     (personal tone, impersonal/scientific, etc.?)
  -simple, technical, clear, ambiguous, wordy, concise, logical, emotive, informative, argumentative....
  -suitability to subject, intention, readership?