Paper Guide
A GUIDE FOR WRITING A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A BOOK
A critical analysis of a book is different from a book summary or review. A review primarily reports the book’s title, author, and publisher. It offers a general description of the content of the book with a cursory discussion of the “setting” or the content, some background on the author and previous works by her or him. A critical analysis, however, goes much beyond such a review, and addresses, in depth, the following points:
1. What is the author’s central thesis or hypothesis? What is the author trying to prove? For example, one author may contend that unemployment is explained by some people being lazy while another author might argue that joblessness results from a lack of jobs created by the economy. Who is the audience for the book?
2. What methodology does the author use to study the problem, period, leader, or experience he or she is writing about? Is it an historical analysis utilizing statistical data or a review of the literature on the subject? Oral history interviews with a given population? Archival resources? Is it comparative? How effective is the author’s choice of methodology? Does it work? Why, or why not? One well-known biography of Malcolm X, for example, uses a Marxian-Freudian methodology to explain the subject’s actions. What would have improved the study – methodologically?
3. How does the author define the problem? What are the author’s sympathies versus her/his antagonisms? With whom do they identify? A clue to this would be a close analysis of the author’s language—are there judgmental or disapproving comments, or references to what could or should have been in the body of the book? For example, in writing about urban violence in the sixties some authors called them riots while other used the term rebellions. If possible, note who supported the author’s research (check the preface and acknowledgements). Does the author compare their work to a
A critical analysis of a book is different from a book summary or review. A review primarily reports the book’s title, author, and publisher. It offers a general description of the content of the book with a cursory discussion of the “setting” or the content, some background on the author and previous works by her or him. A critical analysis, however, goes much beyond such a review, and addresses, in depth, the following points:
1. What is the author’s central thesis or hypothesis? What is the author trying to prove? For example, one author may contend that unemployment is explained by some people being lazy while another author might argue that joblessness results from a lack of jobs created by the economy. Who is the audience for the book?
2. What methodology does the author use to study the problem, period, leader, or experience he or she is writing about? Is it an historical analysis utilizing statistical data or a review of the literature on the subject? Oral history interviews with a given population? Archival resources? Is it comparative? How effective is the author’s choice of methodology? Does it work? Why, or why not? One well-known biography of Malcolm X, for example, uses a Marxian-Freudian methodology to explain the subject’s actions. What would have improved the study – methodologically?
3. How does the author define the problem? What are the author’s sympathies versus her/his antagonisms? With whom do they identify? A clue to this would be a close analysis of the author’s language—are there judgmental or disapproving comments, or references to what could or should have been in the body of the book? For example, in writing about urban violence in the sixties some authors called them riots while other used the term rebellions. If possible, note who supported the author’s research (check the preface and acknowledgements). Does the author compare their work to a