Political Science 101 (7 - Steve Voss)

Extra Credit Essay - Critical Book Review

November 8, 1999



Your answer to the following essay question is due Dec. 13, at the final exam. Please turn in the assignment typed, double-spaced, with page numbers and at least 1" margins on all sides. Formal citations or notes are unnecessary; parenthetical references to book and page number are adequate. Cover pages and bibliographies are unnecessary, as are plastic essay covers or any such supplement-just staple your sheets. Try for a five-page essay, give or take a page.

Read one of the two optional books on our syllabus: Lewis' Make No Law or Birnbaum and Murray's Showdown at Gucci Gulch. (Note that the syllabus leaves out a few of the Lewis chapters, because they were painfully boring). Then write a critical review of the book.

There is no single way to write a critical book review. But I recommend that you answer the following questions in the body of the essay, roughly in this order:

1) What is the authors' agenda? In other words, what are they trying to convince you to believe? Figuring this out while reading a book is not always easy, because the authors may not want you to realize their agenda-but it is critical to evaluating anything you read. It could be a single, but pervasive, point that wraps up the whole volume. Or it could be a handful of little points threaded throughout the discussion. Either way, do not merely assert what the authors are up to. Give evidence.

2) What evidence do the authors provide to defend their main argument(s)? This also can be hard, because authors often pad their writing with tons of irrelevant (although fun) information while providing rather limited evidence.

3) To what extent did the authors convince you to accept what they were trying to peddle? To what extent do you find the evidence unpersuasive? This is the most important portion of a "critical" review. It is where you criticize the book, but not in the manner a film critic picks on a movie. Instead, it forces you to grapple with the core of what you've read and weigh it for merit.



If you have questions, feel free to come to attend the office hours of your T.A. or me, or send email: dsvoss@pop.uky.edu cgwhit2@pop.uky.edu jmcott0@pop.uky.edu