When you write your review, you should seek to provide information essential for any competent review (see below), but you should also write your review in a fashion that makes the reader remember it. Like any other writing, the best reviews are those that demonstrate that the author thought carefully about organization, style, and argument, and structured the essay around some central principle.
The following are suggestions for writing an excellent review:
Make sure you answer the following four questions:
- What is the work about? Remember, the readers of reviews typically have not read the work under review, so it is the writer’s job to acquaint the reader, as much as possible, with the topics and themes explored in the essay or book.
- What argument does the author make, and how does he or she make it? What sorts of evidence does the author provide to support this argument? Does the author employ a particular theoretical (Marxist, postmodern, Whig, etc.) or methodological (privileging of a particular type of sources, linear narrative, etc.) approach in constructing her/his argument(s)?
- Is the argument convincing? Why? (Include here an evaluation of the evidence provided and the theoretical / methodological approach adopted. You will have to scour the footnotes and bibliography.)
- What is the work’s contribution to our understanding of the past, and how does that contribution add to, challenge, confirm, or refocus other interpretations of the same subject?
Answering those four questions tends to give reviews a certain format. Your first paragraph, of course, should be an introduction that lets the reader know your paper’s topic and draws the reader into the essay. Your introductory paragraph should also contain a thesis that is essentially a short summary of your critical evaluation of the work you are reviewing. Like any other piece of good writing, your review needs to have a point, and you need to structure your essay around supporting this point.
After the introduction, you should then write a section that summarizes the topic and argument of the work. Here you should explain not only what the author argues, but also how that argument is made. Describe the sources that provide evidence for the argument, and discuss any particular theoretical or methodological approaches the work takes.
Next, evaluate the argument, explaining both how the author adds to our understanding of this particular topic or time period in history and how convincing the author’s argument is. This section answers questions 3 and 4 about the essay, requiring you to express your informed, intellectual opinion about the work. You need, of course, to use the text to support that opinion. Pay particular attention to how well the evidence the author uses supports the work’s argument. Does she/he interpret the sources appropriately? Are there other sources that might disprove or significantly challenge the argument? Does the author’s theoretical or methodological approach to the crafting of historical knowledge add anything to the overall argument? This is the section where you are supposed to shine as a critic; you don’t have to be universally negative or positive. You have to instead provide a subtle evaluation of both the strengths and weaknesses of the argument. In this evaluation, you should also explain how the book serves as a contribution to the broader field of U.S. history. Does it provide information previously unexplored topics? Does it force historians to reexamine their assumptions about topics that they thought had already been explained adequately? Does the work provide new methods and perspectives that subsequent scholars will have to take into account? Or, does the work offer nothing new, simply rehashing older arguments?
The last section of your essay should be a conclusion. Don’t merely summarize what you’ve already written or repeat points you’ve already made. Rather, offer the reader some final points to consider, both about the work you’ve reviewed and how that work enhances (or diminishes) our understanding and knowledge of U.S. history.