Writing an academic book review.

 

One relatively simple way for ajarns and advanced students to get a publication credit is to write a book review for an academic journal.

Since such reviews are not refereed, they do not have to go through the time-consuming process that full-length articles do. Instead, they are written at the request of the journal’s editors. If you regularly keep up with a scholarly journal in your field you might contact the editor to be added to the list of potential reviewers. A three-line email will suffice for this, introducing yourself and saying you would be pleased to review books for the journal. Usually the editor will tell you if a book seems suitable for you to review it, although you may also suggest a title for review. The websites of some journals even include lists available for review. Keep in mind that reviews are meant to be relatively timely, so unless the book is brand new, it may already be too late to publish a review of it.

How to approach an assignment.

First, you must read the book. This may seem obvious, but some reviewers are guilty of not reading a whole book, and this can cause trouble if they accuse an author of leaving out material that it turns it was in the book after all. Pay attention to word lengths. If the editorial guidelines say the review should be between 800 and 1200 words, do not write more than 1200 words. The editor will not admire you if you do, since this means you have created more editorial work for the journal.

What to leave out of a review.

A review is not a synopsis, so you should not offer a chapter-by-chapter account of what is in the book. Instead, give a brief overview of the main points and contribution of the book, along with some specific details about which you feel you have something original to say. Whether you like or dislike a book does not matter to most editors, although you should be prepared to back up your arguments with facts. Try to remember that one of the points of reviewing books is to get your name more widely known in the scholarly community, so you should be polite, especially if you dislike a book, otherwise you may quickly find yourself hated by the author and whoever else likes the book. In the scholarly world, of course there are many conflicts and much bad feeling, so there is no need to add to them. The point of a review should never just be to make yourself look good, and make the author look bad.

What to aim for.

Ideally, a useful book review will give readers a very shortened view of what it would be like to actually read the book in question. Since many scholars will never actually read the book you are reviewing, you must include enough material to make them feel as if you had done their work for them and saved them time. You may even include your impression of whether the price of the book is reasonable compared to its contents, and if libraries should consider acquiring it. It is suitable to argue why the book deserves or does not deserve to be purchased.

Offer an original viewpoint.

Book reviews are occasions for presenting your own personal input on a given subject, such as what the author did not include, or how the book’s arguments might have been improved. These type of constructive suggestions allow you to show your own expertise and imagination in your area of study. If you really feel that you have nothing new to say about a book, then it may be better to review something else, since you do not want to write a review that may seem dull or uninvolved. Review a book that you feel strongly about, or that you would read anyway, even if it were not assigned to you.

The more book reviews you read, the easier it will be to write one.

Naturally, if you spend time reading book reviews, you will get a good idea of ideal form and content for them. You will also see the kind of books the editors of a journal want reviewed, and how they want them discussed. You may notice that since review space is scarce, few journals will even bother to review books of no value, just to denounce them. For this reason, avoid wasting any time trying to review books you hate and which you think are junk, since you might be spending your time much more usefully in making colleagues aware of valuable or overlooked material instead.

What most good academic book reviews contain.

If you read through the book reviews in several issues of your favourite academic journal, you will find that almost all contain a short description of the book’s subject and what it is meant to prove. You may wish to comment on the book’s intended readership. Who is the book written for? Do you agree with the main thesis or theses offered in the book, and why? Be sure not just to give your personal opinion, but give evidence of why you disagree. If anything in the book is particularly good or bad, that is useful for readers to know, so devote some words to this as well. Finally, although it may seem obvious, be sure that all the practical information about the book is included in your review, such as title, author, publisher, number of pages, price, publication date, ISBN number, et al. If the publisher is little-known or might be otherwise difficult to find, you may wish to offer a URL for the publisher’s website, since the point is to make it easy for readers to find this book if they want it.

Why are academic book reviews different from other book reviews?

You may wonder what makes academic or scholarly book reviews different from the ones we see in newspapers and other periodicals intended to be read by the general public. The most important difference is that in an academic review, you are writing in the expectation of being read by a scholarly community who share your knowledge and interests. Book reviews for the general public usually start with a basis of total ignorance of any subject on the part of readers and editors, and they are almost always justified in this assumption. By contrast, in scholarly reviews, you should be careful not to over-define or over-explain obvious terms that are known to every first-year student in your subject, since you do not want to seem to insult the reader’s intelligence. Your role as an academic reviewer is to be helpful and courteous, since you are performing a real service to the wider intellectual world.

(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).