Pi Gamma Mu Honor Society

James Lowry, PhD
Assistant Professor and Chair
Department of Geography
350 Milneburg Hall
2000 Lakeshore Dr.
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, LA 70148

* This address is useful for the U. S. Postal Service and other delivery services such as UPS and Federal Express.

Ordinarily, Dr. Lowry has a number of books that publishers have sent to him in the hope that a book review will eventually appear in the Review. Twice a year he sends out an email seeking reviewers. If you would like to be added to his email distribution list please email him at jlowry@uno.edu. It is also possible to review a book that you choose yourself; however, we suggest that you check with Dr. Lowry before undertaking the work involved in preparing the review: Tell him, for example, the author and title of the book that you are planning to read and about which you would like to write a book review. Ordinarily, the editors will not be interested in a review of a book that has been published more than 1.5 years earlier.

There are eight basic features of a suitable book review. While the list of basic features is not intended to be inflexible, on the other hand the editors do not want to receive a non-critical, non-analytical summary of the book's "story." It is not necessary, or even desirable, that a book-review essay have eight sections to address the basic features in sequence. Normally, there is some integration of treatment of the features within the essay. For example, in discussing a particular chapter of the book, the book-review author might compare that chapter with other literature in the field, thus integrating two of the features in the same sentence(s).

The eight basic features are:

(1) SCOPE: The topic addressed in the book should be stated in the book review.

(2) THESIS: The author's main argument(s) should be identified in the book review.

(3) CONTENT: Some summary of the "story" (facts, anecdotes, other empirical evidence, and other content) should be provided (in moderation).

(4) CRITIQUE/EVALUATION: This is the reviewer's evaluation/analysis, both positive and negative, of the author's arguments, the book's content, evidence used by the author in making her argument, and the author's conclusions. This feature is the heart of the book review.

(5) OTHER LITERATURE IN THE FIELD (or HISTORIOGRAPHY): This is a description of the relationship of the book being reviewed to other literature previously published about the topic or closely related topics.

(6) CHARACTER OF RESEARCH: The reviewer takes note of the primary and secondary sources used by the author to make his argument.

(7) LITERARY QUALITY: Some attention, although brief, should be given to how the book reads as literature.

(8) CONCLUSION: At the end of the book review, the reviewer should offer a summarized positive or negative assessment of the book.

Please avoid the practice of structuring your book review with statements that "Chapter I begins with . . .," "Chapters 2 through 4 tell about . . ." The table of contents is ordinarily of little interest to ISSR readers. Let the substantive content structure your essay.

The length of the book review should be no more than 1000 words. At the top, the reviewer should reproduce the book's bibliographic entry (author's name, book title, edition if any, place of publication, publisher, year, number of pages, and price of book). At the bottom, the reviewer should provide his name, title, and institution, as follows:

James Lowry, PhD
Assistant Professor and Chair**
Department of Geography
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, LA

** If you have more than one title (e.g., one academic title and one administrative title), write the title that you would prefer that we print in the Review.

Any reviewer who has access to a computer should submit her book review electronically. The review essay should be attached to an email message and submitted to jlowry@uno.edu as a Microsoft Word document.

Once a reviewer has accepted a book provided to the ISSR for the purpose of having it reviewed, the reviewer is expected to read the book and submit the essay within a period of 5 months.

In the case of a direct quotation from the book being reviewed, the passage should be surrounded by quotation marks and followed by the page number--e.g., (p. 100). In the case of a direct quotation from another book, or if the author of the book review wishes to make reference to another book, then an endnote in the format of the Turabian style manual is necessary. Example: The author departs from the norm reported by Gilmour and Haley, who wrote: "Characteristically, policy making has been accorded greatest attention at the macro level. . . ."1 The endnote would be: 1 Robert S. Gilmour and Alexis A. Halley, Who Makes Public Policy? The Struggle for Control between Congress and the Executive (Chatham, N. J.: Chatham House Publishers, 1994), p. 4. The need to cite direct quotations leads to another guideline, which is that book-review authors should rely as much as possible (almost entirely, if possible) on their own words and limit the use of direct quotations. Repeated use of direct quotations is rarely necessary, but, as stated above, will necessitate repeated citations, which will be very distracting. There may be instances where direct quotations are really necessary to make the point, and the book-review author will need to use his or her judgment about the necessity. In general, the guideline is: Whenever possible, use your own words.

The book-review editor will consider offers by a reviewer to do a comparative review of a plural number of books (usually between two and five) that are closely related to each other. In such cases, the 1000-word limit may be relaxed. But contact the book-review editor in advance before undertaking any such project.