Hello. I have to write a book review for History class. I have selected The Punic Wars by Adrian Goldsworthy. I have never written a book review, and the assignment must be 5 pages or longer.
I cannot seem to find on the internet a place to read scholarly book reviews on historical books other than at William and Mary Quarterly or The American Historical Review which appear to be subscription fee oriented websites.
We have also been advised to study a book review on our chosen book as well.
Can anyone point me in the direction of a nice, free database of historical book reviews? Bonus points for ancient history. Extra bonus points for scholarly (non-Amazonian) book review of my selected book.
Edit: Also, some advice on writing a scholarly book review would be appreciated as well.
That part is a real [censored]. All good peer reviews are published in scholarly magazines like
Britannia,
Acta Classica or the
American Journal of Archaeology, non of which are accessible for free. Maybe you can find a local library with subscriptions to some of those magazines that allow you to read them, otherwise I don't really know where you can find any decent reviews.
As for writing a review, it's been a while since I've done that but I think I can give you the basics. First off, I'd like to say that five pages is ridiculously long for a review. Most are typically two or three pages long. I guess you'll just have to deal with it.
First you'll have to introduce the book and the author. Mention the title briefly and give a short biography of the author. Nothing too long, his name, current function, other notable functions he/she has held before and some his/her most important publications. This shouldn't be more than one paragraph. After that you briefly summarize the book you're reviewing. Start this section with Goldsworthy's main question and conclusion, and then give a list of his most important arguments. This part shouldn't be more than half of your review, two or two and a half pages should do it. How you criticize the book after that depends on you, really. You can already mix your critiques on his arguments with your summarizing part, or you could keep those sections separated, your call. Also note that you are not limited to criticizing his arguments: you can also critique his writing style, use of ancient sources (for example if Goldsworthy uses unnecessarily long quotations, or too few, or perhaps if he is not critical enough of ancient writers, or questions their authority when he shouldn't because they know better than him what they are talking about). You end your review with your final conclusion on the book, the most important part of which should be whether or not you would recommend the book to readers interested in the Punic Wars. In this part you should also take the possible audience in mind. Mention if the book requires a lot of advance knowledge or not, whether it is only easily accessible for experts or if people with little advance knowledge could enjoy it as well.
If you have time, you may want to read Gregory Daly,
Cannae: the experience of battle in the second Punic War (2002). I actually have a presentation on that as part of my MA exam ten days from now. He is quite critical of Goldsworthy, though I can't recall how exactly right now. His point I think was that Goldsworthy claims it is impossible to reconstruct how being part of a battle would have been for the common soldiers in the ancient world, while most of Daly's book is doing exactly that. Maybe I'll post some details later if I recall them.
Edit: By the way, I have not read
The Punic Wars, but I did read Goldsworthy's
In the name of Rome (2003) and didn't find it very enjoyable. If you're interested in ancient warfare and you'd like to read something just for fun, I can really recommend Daly's book. It's
very good.
» Mon May 14, 2012 11:22 pm 
