Activity: Finding Book Reviews

Book reviews are one of the key ways that scholars in the humanities and history evaluate the contribution a book makes to the scholarly conversation. Because book reviews are an important publication format in the humanities, many journals in the disciplines include substantial book review sections (e.g., Modern Language Review Links to an external site.). There are even journals that are just compilations of book reviews (e.g., Reviews in American History Links to an external site.).

It is not uncommon for students to be required to find, read, and write a book review as part of their academic coursework. Consequently, it can be helpful to expose yourself early on to examples of scholarly book reviews.

Activity: Find & Read a Book Review

Think of a scholarly book that you have recently read related to your research topic. Keep in mind that scholarly book reviews may not appear until a couple of years after a book is first published. You will need the title, author and year of publication.

So for example if you wanted to find reviews of UW history professor Stephanie Smallwood's 2007 book, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, you could search for: 

search example: "saltwater slavery" and smallwood

Using one of the databases below, find a book review by searching for the title in combination with the author.

Tips

Return to Introduction