Review

Critical Review Assignment

Critical Review of a Scholarly Text

The purpose of this assignment is to evaluate the usefulness of a scholarly text and to write a critical review of that text as a service to potential readers of the work. In your review, you will explain to potential readers the text's thesis, its methodology or mode of analysis including the kinds of evidence it uses, its theoretical assumptions, the topics covered in each chapter, its weaknesses and strengths, and the ways in which the text may be useful to other scholars. Your review will also take into consideration other reviewers’ assessments of the book.

Your review should offer your reader a clear and specific sense of the text's ideas. Be sure that you explain them fully and provide demonstrations from the text. One way you might proceed is by offering your reader a chapter by chapter analysis that includes an explanation of the thesis idea in each. Or you may choose to highlight only the most important chapters, the ones that you feel are most valuable. You should also note any particularly problematic chapters or sections. The idea is to give your reader a full sense of the book's purpose, its scope, the material it covers, and its success or failure in achieving what it sets out to do.

If you detect any hidden biases or assumptions beneath the text, you should explain them to your reader and analyze the way in which they affect the writer's argument and conclusions or the kinds of evidence he or she includes and excludes. Analyze any weaknesses you perceive in the work and explain how they affect its value to other scholars. Given its weaknesses, is the work still useful? In what ways, or for what readers, is the book particularly useful?

In evaluating the book, you might look at any number of concerns: its thesis, argumentation and logical development, use of evidence, documentation, scholarly apparatus (like index, bibliography, notes), style, tone, readability, its grounding assumptions or underlying biases, etc.

Requirements for the Critical Review:

Your review will indicate the book's purpose, scope, its central thesis and supporting ideas, the material it considers, its scholarly rigor, and its success or failure in attaining its purposes.

It will indicate the book's strengths and its usefulness to other scholars, critics, teachers, readers, etc. Of what use might it be to others?

It will consider its weaknesses.

It will also consider two other reviews of the text at points in your own review where this seems most useful. You should integrate this material smoothly into your own argument, not just leave it in a chunk at the beginning or end of your essay. You should include your own judgment of these other reviewers' work, either agreeing or disagreeing with their assessments. Try to formulate your own judgment independently, and use your reading of the other reviews to sharpen your own critical insight rather than to define it.

Your review will use a works cited page and proper MLA documentation. It must be flawless in its documentation form. This is a given in all graduate-level work. Your review will be free of all grammatical, mechanical, and editing errors. I will not read, nor grant credit for, work with excessive MLA, grammatical, or mechanical errors. Be sure to proofread and edit your review before you submit it for credit.

Your review will be 8 typed pages in length.