How Not to Write a Book Review

Writing good book reviews is an art that is worth pursuing – an art I don’t claim to have mastered. As with most things, sometimes there’s plenty to learn about book reviews from bad examples. How about this one: John Wilson Croker on John Keats. I’m no expert on either, but I found the recent article, “How Not to Write a Book Review: What a Hatchet job on John Keats teaches us,” by Robert Pinsky, a writer for Slate Magazine, a fun read. I was thinking about book reviews because the students in my Civil War class presented their own reviews the other day and it turned into a wonderful learning experience. The fact that it worked was nothing I had done – it was simply because the students had chosen authors from a variety of interpretive perspectives. Several presented on Lincoln biographies they had read –so the class was able to see some conflicting assessments. It turned into a great discussion about perspective, objectivity and historiography. I always feel fortunate when the learning environment actually works!