Writing a Critical Review
I suggest that the only books that
influence us are those for which we are ready,
and which have gone a little farther down our
particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
--E.M.
Forster 
How to Write a Critical Book Review
by
John L. Nies, Ph. D.
A critical book review falls naturally into three segments.
FIRST, you must determine the trustworthiness of the book as a
source.
Is it a primary source or a secondary? If a secondary, who is the
author? What are his qualifications, i.e., is he a reputable scholar, a
journalist, an amateur indulging his hobby, a quack? What is his
background? Has he an axe to grind? Is he, for example, a British
Socialist, a Nebraska Republican, a Spanish Catholic, the son-in-law of
his subject? Anything that might reveal a possible bias is relevant.
No man is without his prejudices, but the scholar is dedicated to
minimizing their effect as much as possible by being aware of his own
striving to reduce their influence.
To find out about the author, therefore, a trip to the library
is necessary. Information about American celebrities can be found in
Who's Who in America. American academics can be found in the
Directory of American Scholars, which is divided into several
volumes according to academic disciplines. For English authors the
primary source is Who's Who. Any English scholar will find his
place in this work. Remember that Who's Who is an annual
production. If your author is not found in a current volume, it may be
that he is dead. You should consult Who Was Who and Who Was
Who in America in that case. No luck still? Have you searched the
book carefully for clues? Frequently a paperback edition of a work will
contain some information about the author on the cover or in a special
note in the front or in the back of the book. Sometimes a dated preface
will give information of the author's nationality. Finally, there are
book reviews appearing in newspapers and magazines. Since they are
critical book reviews, they will naturally contain information about the
author of the book they are reviewing. By checking the reverse of the
title page you will find the printing history of the book, i.e., the
date of the first and all subsequent editions. The book will have been
reviewed in the Book Review Digest for that year (remember, though,
that
it is quite possible that a book will not be reviewed until the next
year). You look the book up under the author's name. If it is
reviewed, the Digest will contain summaries of the principal
notices, giving the name of the newspaper and the date. You write down
several of these to which you have access, you find the review in them,
and voila, information about the author. The best sources for
reviews, i.e., the most trustworthy reviews, appear in the Times
Literary Supplement; The New York Times Book Review; and
The New York Review of Books. For works of history and political
science, it is important to check out the reviews in the professional
journals of those disciplines.
Finally, in dealing with a serious work you want to check out
the scholarly apparatus. Has the book footnotes? Are they to secondary
or primary sources? Is there a bibliography? Are there any of the
other paraphanalia with which academics bedeck their intellectual children?
The information about the author should form the first paragraph of
perhaps two of your review. You should make an effort to integrate it
into a pleasing whole, not a long string of declarative sentences. An
example follows:
Mr. Peter Gay, the author of Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as
Realist (Princeton University Press, 1959), was born in Keokuk, Iowa
on February 29, 1934. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Bryn
Mawr, Mr. Gay took his M.A. at Dartmouth in 1955 and his Ph.D. at
Harvard in 1959. He taught first at the University of Nebraska, but he
is currently an associate professor of history at Columbia University.
His previous works include The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism:
Edward Bernstein's Challenge to Marx. In 1955-56 he held the Hoffer
Fellowship on the Council of Humanities at Princeton
University.
The information about Mr. Gay's birth and academic career are to be
found in the Directory of American Scholars. The rest is cribbed
from the jacket of the hard cover edition. From what appears it is
obvious that Mr. Gay is a recognized American historian. It is not
necessary to belabor the point. Should you be more industrious and find
out even more pertinent information about Mr. Gay you would include it,
but what appears is quite sufficient.
The SECOND part of your critical book review is a statement of the
contents. Here you want to indicate both subject and theme. Subject:
what the author is talking about. Theme: what the author says about
the subject. Depending upon the nature of the book, you will take a
greater or lesser amount of space for this purpose. What you are
interested in doing here is informing your reader of what he will find
when he picks up the book. So you tell him what the book is about and
how the author covers his material, i.e., what the author thinks about
his subject, what his point of view is. So you tell him. For example,
in the book referred to above, the subject is obviously Voltaire as a
politician. But even a cursory reading of the book shows that its aim
is polemic. Gay is convinced that Enlightenment thinkers, the
Philosophes, were not abstracted, dreamy intellectuals, but
hard-headed, realistic politicians. He has in this book taken Voltaire
as an example and by tracing his career chronologically attempted to
show how this was so. If you were writing a review of Gay's book, then,
you would say all of this, and the meat of these paragraphs would be a
summary of this chronology.
These paragraphs setting forth the contents of the work under review
are, of course, strictly expository. Here you are simply giving the
facts: the contents of the book and the author's point of view. Your
own opinions are irrelevant. Your end is simply to inform the reader
objectively.
It is in the THIRD part of your review that you become critical,
that you judge the work. Here it is your opinions that matter and your
reaction to the book. Did you like the book or not? Was it worth
reading? Had it anything of value to say? What? Were there any
sections that were particularly good, particularly bad? Was the
treatment of some theme or topic particularly noteworthy? Did you learn
something new, or is it all old hat? Is there some particular idea that
you liked? Did you find contradictions in what the author said in
different parts? Does the work conflict with some other work that you
have read? Here of course is where you bring in the other matters
discussed above in reference to the value of the book. Is there
critical apparatus? How was the book received? Is it current? If old,
is it still valuable? (Remember, a recent date does not ipso
facto make a book good, nor does the fact that the book was written
some
years ago mean that it is either bad or superseded.) In a word, in this
last section you give your reactions to the book. The first two parts
of the book review have been merely mechanical. The third part is your
opportunity to display your talent.
Obviously, it is not enough simply to say I like the book; I didn't
like the book. Statements must be concrete and backed up by citations,
either from the book or from some other work, a review of the work in
the New York Times, for example. Always cite such sources using
a form recommended by a standard style book.
How Do I Cite Sources that I
Have Used in a Critical Review?
Still Have Questions?
Contact Dr. Dean Here
Return to Learning Resources Page Here
Return to Dr. Dean's Home Page Here