Title. Author. Place of publication: publisher, date of publication. Number of pages.
Reviewed by (your name)
The introduction starts with a statement of the theme of the book, and lets your readers know what the review will say. It must therefore include a very brief overview of the contents of the book, the purpose of, or audience for the book, and a brief summary of your reaction and evaluation.
Place the book in theoretical, policy and/or historical context. You might also discuss what are reasonable criteria for judging the book.
This is very much like the summary you might write in an abstract or synopsis. Attempt to put the author's argument in its best light. Summarize it fairly, without inserting your own views. You might want to quote or paraphrase key passages from the book. Avoid plagiarism by placing quotation marks around quotes and placing the page number from which the quote or paraphrase comes in parentheses immediately afterwards.
This is the heart of the book review and where your views come into play. Remember that you may not be able to express fully your own views. The point of the book review is to present a critical reading of someone else's work, not to give a full exposition of your own work. Carefully distinguish your views from the author's.
Finish with a conclusion which ties together issues raised in the review and provides a concise comment on the book.
Should you cite a work other than that under review, give full bibliographic information on it.
At the top of the page give the article's full citation.
EXAMPLE: Rousseas, Stephen. "Can the U.S. Financial System Survive the Revolution?" Challenge, Vol 32, no. 2 (March-April, 1989), pp. 39-43.
Don't forget to put your name at the top.
First sentence. Statement of theme or argument. One or two sentences that convey a sense of the overall argument. This might be a conclusion, an important theoretical implication, or a policy suggestion.
EXAMPLE: Highly leveraged debt combined with bank deregulation and financial innovation has rendered the U.S. financial system increasingly unstable and vulnerable to recession.
The remainder of the first paragraph is an overview of the argument itself.
EXAMPLE: Deregulation weakened both commercial banks and S&Ls by allowing them to enter more risky markets at a time when two major sources of high-risk borrowing, LDC debt and leveraged buy-outs, were booming. Financial innovation loosened much of the remaining regulatory system, and frustrated monetary policy. A recession, whether of exogenous or domestic origin, would leave in shambles a financial system that is heavily exposed to bad LDC debt and unsecured "junk-bond" lending.
Summarize the argument; do not attempt to summarize each paragraph.
"Flesh-out" the argument presented in the first paragraph. In the example, points that might be mentioned are: Deregulation resulted in fewer banks; ill-conceived monetary policy; financial deregulation and innovation tend to trigger and reinforce each other; leveraged buy-outs. DO NOT LIST these points. Write them in prose.
Economy of style is in order. Try to express an idea in as few words as possible, without doing it violence.
Avoid using the first person ("I" and "We"), second person ("you"), and phrases like "the author believes..."
Avoid the passive voice. The phrase "the monetary base was increased by open market actions" (passive voice) can be shortened to "open market actions increased the monetary base" (active voice).
Use gender-neutral pronouns. Do not use "he" or "man" when referring to people in general or to unspecified individuals. Instead use, for example, "people," "him or her," or "S/he."
The Internship Portfolio is an integral part of the internship program, and will include the following:
