The name of the book is “America’s Two-Headed Pig”
please follow the SPECIFIC CLUE which I attached, which are 1.Issue or problem addressed; 2.Thesis proposed; 3.Thesis support; 4. Response to the work; 5.Specific present-day examples of memes launched by the book’s publication.
I really appreciate it.
GENERAL CLUES
1). Your writing needs to be objective. Go through your draft and line out all references to your own
personal opinions, your statements of your own likes and dislikes, your own agreement or
disagreements with the author. Take out verbiage that reads like advertising copy, either recommending
2). Stick with facts. If you don’t have a clear basis for knowing what you have written, leave it out.
Don’t say things you don’t know or would have trouble backing up if asked. (In this kind of writing
references generally do not need to be listed.)
3). Organize your writing (and your thoughts!) under headings as outlined in the class assignment. This
outline is intended to provide an analytical framework for the development of both your own
4). Make it information-dense but brief. This means you want to give careful thought to the information
you want to convey and use your words well to convey that information efficiently. You can have long
sentences with supportive or elaborating clauses (efficiently conveying much information), but have
short paragraphs (stop writing when you have conveyed your information). Do write in complete
5). Format your writing with headings in bold and make clear division into paragraphs with white space
between (a typical business report format). You want your reader to be able to take in the organization
of your report with a quick glance, and to be able to easily return to a section of your report later.
6). Proofread: Spell check and ask someone else to read over your paper to help you spot typographical
errors, grammar errors, or hard-to-follow writing.
SPECIFIC CLUES
For our assignment, imagine that you are writing this review for someone with a background, interest
and position in food and agriculture who is charged with making both short and long-term managerial
decisions. Your reader has limited time and will not be reading the book. Your object is to provide your
reader with an introduction to this book and its influence so that your reader can make better informed,
more worldly decisions. Note, you are not making decisions for your reader, but rather, providing
objective information about the world as a foundation for your reader to base their own decisions upon.
The following notes and elaborations on the assignment outline can help you focus on making your
book review useful to our imagined reader.
Issue or problem addressed: What did the author set out to do? What was the author’s goal or object?
Why did they write the book? One would expect this to flow from the author’s background described
Thesis proposed: Work here to concisely state the author’s main thesis. The book’s title and subtitle may
Thesis support: This will likely be the longest section of your review. You can briefly outline how the
author supported their thesis and then elaborate to give your reader more of a sense of the author’s
argument, the models and facts the author works with, as well as the book’s color and tone. Both the
book’s strengths and limitations can come through here.
We are being objective, sticking with facts, but as we step away and look dispassionately at the work
before us, the author’s expressed feelings and opinions are relevant facts!
Response to the work: It is under this heading that we describe the influence of the book’s publication.
Was it a widely read popular book or a special-interest book? Whom did it appeal to? Is the book still
You can review the “issue addressed” and “thesis proposed” sections and consider the book’s influence
from those perspectives. Has the the author’s thesis been adopted and elaborated by others? Has
controversy been stirred? Consciousness raised? Themes developed?
This is the appropriate section in which to include what the author did following the book’s publication
if relevant. For some of our book’s authors the publication and response to their work set their
Specific present-day examples of memes launched by the book’s publication: Look up “meme” on the
Internet for inspiration, especially if you are not quite clear what this concept means. The memes
launched by the books are likely simpler than the author’s thesis, can come out of the sense or feelings
expressed by the book, and can actually be a distortion of the author’s stated position. A brief statement
here of the meme or memes developed by your book will aid your thinking.
The specific examples can range from something quite concrete, such as the CRP (Conservation
Reserve Program) of the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service for the conservation of soils, to
an example that is expressed as an interest, trend, style or fashion. Memes are our inherited culture!
