Book Review Assignment Instructions

Overview

You will write a book reviews (see list of books to choose from). Requests for books not on this list will not be accepted. Important note: you should choose a book you have not already read and/or written a review on. It is fine to give a short summary of the book, but the crux of the Book Review must be a critique or analysis of the book’s main argument or theme. Also, your thesis statement must show the reader the direction you are going in your review. You are expected on some level to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the book within the review.

Instructions

Book Review should contain the following:

  • 2-3 pages of text.
  • A bibliographic entry at top of first page (no title page needed)
  • An identification of the main argument or theme (last sentence of the first paragraph. This will serve as your thesis);
  • An organized and detailed analysis of the book’s primary argument or theme (body of the paper.
  • A conclusion (last paragraph).
  • 12 point Times New Roman font and have 1-inch margins, double space.
  • Use parenthetical citations for the book under review (not footnotes).

Book Lists for Book Reviews:

Book Review: Assignment (Choose one book from this list below and write a 2-3 page review).

Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Year’s War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766.

Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century

Timothy Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence

Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America

Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia

Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities

David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America

Joanna Bowen Gillespie, The Life and Times of Martha Laurens Ramsay, 1759-1811

Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture

Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788

Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation

Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia: 1740-1790

Thomas Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America

Thomas Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father

Thomas Kidd, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father

Frank Lambert, Inventing the Great Awakening

Thomas J. Little, The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism: Religious Revivalism in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1760

Brendan McConville, The Kings Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776

George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life

Henry May, The Enlightenment in America

Samuel C. Smith, A Cautious Enthusiasm: Mystical Piety and Evangelicalism in Colonial South Carolina