Topic: Book review
Description:
No Outside source
Book: Ratigan, Dylan Greedy Bastards! How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry. Simon & Schuster: NY, NY, 2012.
ISBN 978--1--4516--4222--3
Instruction:
A) Summary: The summary portion of a critical book review should provide the following information. It answers the question, what is the author doing and saying in the book?
a. State what sort of work this book is (for example, is it an anthropological study, a personal testimony, a report of other’s testimonies, a novel, a philosophical examination, a biographical work, a theological work, or an ethical or historical study?) The table of contents, preface, and introduction should make this clear to you.
b. State the book’s premise (the book’s main message, position the author is set to prove or disprove in his/her book) in at least two to three paragraphs.
c. What are the author’s purposes, interests, or questions?
d. Identify and summarize the basic facts, ideas, and/or arguments that constitute the work; what the author uses to support his premise, what is his evidence? (This will be the main body of your summary section)
B) Evaluation: The evaluation portion of a critical book review is your opportunity to critique/analyze what you have read. A critique/analysis seeks to investigate the premise posited by the author and the evidence he/she used to support that.
a. Remember to not speak in the first person.
b. Provide statement(s) or thorough discussion of the author’s theme (main underlying idea), purpose, and methods of development, has the author proved his assertions with the evidence he supplied?
c. Evaluation of the work, clearly presented and well--supported; Selected short quotations from the work that are representative of the
theme, tone, and style that you wish to draw attention to and critique.
d. Which of the purposes that the author(s) sought to achieve have been reached?
e. What about the author’s work is illuminating or convincing?
f. What is incomplete or unconvincing about this work?
g. Be sure to provide reasons for any disagreements you have with the author and evidence to support your position.
h. Consider whether the disagreement with the author might be resolved and explain what would make the author’s argument more complete.