prepare one book review, 3-4 full pages of text in length (double-spaced) with 1” margins. The book review will cover Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. In this review, you will need to summarize the entire book and comment on the sources used by the author in developing her interpretation. You should also focus on issues related to gender and sports in your review and critique Cayleff’s effectiveness in proving her thesis. You must submit an electronic copy of your book review to the Dropbox no later than noon on Wednesday, August 1. GUIDELINES FOR BOOK REVIEWS
A book review is an essay whose purpose is to comment on a particular work or a series of works bearing upon a single subject. The most important point to remember about a book review is that it is a commentary, not merely a summary. For the purpose of this course, the review should be roughly one-half summary and one-half critique. You must include both the summary and the critique in your review to be eligible to receive full credit.
Format
The reviewer must begin each composition with a heading that includes the title, author or editor, place of publication, date of publication, and number of pages in the preface and text. For example:
Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. By Susan E. Cayleff. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Failure to include the heading will result in a lower grade.
Content
Each review must contain several specific components. Essential is the reviewer’s evaluation of the important aspects of the book. Reviewers should also include pertinent information about the author, such as his/her field of specialization, professional contributions, and biographical data if it has affected the interpretation of history.
In reviewing monographs and biographies, the reviewer must explain how the author handled the sources. The reviewer must specify the extent to which the author’s conclusions flowed from the evidence considered and to what degree the author seemed to stretch the evidence to achieve a particular purpose. The reviewer must inform the readers whether the author used primary sources, such as diaries, letters, newspapers, church records, and government documents, or solely depended upon secondary works, such as other authors’ books, for information. Also, readers of the reviews deserve to know how the author acknowledged sources, whether in footnotes/endnotes, bibliography, or bibliographical essay.
Each review shall inform readers whether the author organized the book chronologically or topically, clearly or vaguely, and on an elementary or advanced level. It must indicate whether the author’s language was precise or obscure. It must reveal the extent to which the author succeeded in conveying the excitement of the original historical situation.
The report should indicate the nature of the book and its contents, but do not attempt to reproduce the table of contents or the chapter headings. Certainly you should evaluate—given the evidence—the weaknesses and merits of the volume. In particular, make clear what the author proposed to do in writing the book. An author should be judged—whether favorably or unfavorably—with regard to the book he/she actually wrote. Do not be overawed or hypercritical of the book, but read and review it critically and with an open mind.
