Book and Article Reviews

While essays are the most common forms of communicating your investigative efforts, this guide explains a number of other types of writing assignment you may come across in your career as an academic detective. The book or article review involves you reading, summarising and analysing a particular book or article within a set word limit. You should treat a review like an essay. It should have an introduction, use supporting evidence, have a conclusion and be referenced.

There are two parts to a review: the descriptive summary and the analysis of the material you are reviewing. You gain marks by showing that you understand what the book or article is about, and that you have been able to link it into wider debates in the existing literature. The important point to remember is that you are explaining what the author is saying, rather than merely describing and repeating the words of the author. The key aspect of a review is the evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the particular work.

Much of your analysis will be derived from other sources of information and you are therefore expected to do wider reading on the topic. After your introduction, you should describe the main points of the work in terms of its content and its argument. The descriptive part of the review shouldn't take up more than 50 per cent of the overall word limit. The remainder of the review should be set aside for analysis: this is where you evaluate what the author argues, indicating strengths and weaknesses such as the quality of the supporting evidence for arguments and the importance of the issues raised. To help analyse a book or article, consider the following questions:

• What is the author's thesis/argument?
• To what debate in the literature does the author contribute?
• Do you find the argument and evidence presented persuasive?
• If the author presents original research findings, what methods were used to collect the data? Are there limitations to the research design and methods used?
• If research findings are presented, does the data support the conclusions drawn? Could alternative conclusions be drawn?
• Could the author have approached the topic from another perspective?
• Are some issues neglected? What assumptions does the author make?

In reviews, the following format can be used as a general guide:

1. Title page, with full bibliographic details of the book or article to be reviewed.
2. An introductory paragraph which includes the full name of the author and the title of the book or article.
3. In the introduction, briefly describe what the work is about—that is, the author's central argument and theoretical perspective, where relevant.
4. Then proceed to describe and critically analyse the article.
5. In one paragraph, write a conclusion which sums up the material and provides an overall evaluation of the article in terms of its central argument and its relevance to the field of study.

You are required to reference the article you are reviewing as you would any other source of information, and it therefore appears in your reference list at the end of your assignment.