Court Observation

WRITING AN ACADEMIC BOOK REVIEW

Writing a book review may be an unfamiliar exercise, it is not as complex a task as writing an essay requiring a lot of library research. It is, however, not the same as a book review in The Age, which is written for the general reader.

Your book review is written for a reader (your lecturer or tutor) who is knowledgeable in the discipline and is interested not just in the coverage and content of the book being reviewed, but also in your critical assessment of the ideas and argument that are being presented by the author.

The review should not be a summary of the book. Instead it should state what the book sets out to do and assess how well the author achieves that goal. Your review might therefore be guided by the following questions:

|Objectives |What does the book set out to do? |
|Theory |Is there an explicit theoretical framework? If not, are there important theoretical assumptions? |
|Concepts |What are the central concepts? Are they clearly defined? |
|Argument |What is the central argument? Are there specific hypotheses? |
|Method |What methods are employed to test these? |
|Evidence |Is evidence provided? How adequate is it? |
|Values