What are the author’s main points?

What are the author’s main points? Again, these will often be stated in the introduction. What kind of evidence does the author use to prove his or her points? Is the evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does the author support his or her points ad equately? How does this book relate to other books on the same topic? Is the book unique? Does it add new information? What group of readers, if any, would find this book most useful? Does the author have the necessary expertise to write the book? What credentials or background does the author have that qualify him or her to write the book? Has the author written other books or papers on this topic? Do others in this field consider this author to be an expert? What are the most appropriate criter ia by which to judge the book? How successful do you think the author was in carrying out the overall purposes of the book? Depending on your book’s purpose, you should select appropriate criteria by which to judge its success. Use any criteria your in structor has given you in lecture or on your assignment sheet. Otherwise, here are some criteria to consider. For example, if an author says his or her purpose is to argue for a particular solution to a public problem, then the review should judge whethe r the author has defined the problem, identified causes, planned points of attack, provided necessary background information, and offered specific solutions. A review should also indicate the author’s professional expertise. In other books, however, the authors may argue for their theory about a particular phenomenon. Reviews of these books should evaluate what kind of theory the book is arguing for, how much and what kind of evidence the author uses to support his or her scholarly claims, how valid the evidence seems, how expert the author is, and how much the book contributes to the knowledge of the field. Writing the Book Review Book reviews generally include the following kinds of information; keep in mind, though, that you may need to include other information to explain your assessment of a book. Most reviews start off with a heading that includes all the bibliographic information about the book. If your assignment sheet does not indicate which form you should use, you can use the following: Tit le . Author. Place of publication: publisher, date of publication. Number of pages. Like most pieces of writing, the review itself usually begins with an introduction that lets your readers know what the review will say. The first paragraph usually inc ludes the author and title again, so your readers don’t have to look up to find this information. You should also include a very brief overview of the contents of the book, the purpose or audience for the book, and your reaction and evaluation. You shoul d then move into a section of background information that helps place the book in context and discusses criteria for judging the book. Next, you should give a summary of the main points of the book, quoting and paraphrasing key phrases from the author. Fi nally, you get to the heart of your review — your evaluation of the book. In this section, you might discuss some of the following issues: • how well the book has achieved its goal • what possibilities are suggested by the book • what the book has left out • how the book compares to others on the subject • what specific points are not convincing • what personal experiences you’ve had related to the subject. It is important to use labels to carefully distinguish your views from the author’s, so that you don ’t confuse your reader. Then, like other essays, you can end with a direct comment on the book, and tie together issues raised in the review in a conclusion. There is, of course, no set formula, but a general rule of thumb is that the first one - half to t wo - thirds of the review should summarize the author’s main ideas and at least one - third should evaluate the book. Check with your instructor. Example Below is a review of Taking Soaps Seriously by Michael Intintoli, written by Ruth Rosen in the Journal of Communication . Note that Rosen begins with a context for Intintoli’s book, showing how it is different from other books about soap operas. She finds a strength in the kind of details that his methodology enables him to see. However, she disagrees wit h his choice of case study. All in all, Rosen finds Intintoli’s book most useful for novices, but not one that advances our ability to critique soap operas very much. Taking Soaps Seriously: The World of Guiding Light . Michael Intintoli. New York: Pra eger, 1984. 248 pp. Ever since the U.S. public began listening to radio soaps in the 1930s, cultural critics have explored the content, form, and popularity of daytime serials. Today, media critics take a variety of approaches. Some explore audience re sponse and find that, depending on sex, race, or even nationality, people “decode” the same story in different ways. Others regard soaps as a kind of subversive form of popular culture that supports women's deepest grievances. Still others view the soap as a “text” and attempt to “deconstruct” it, much as a literary critic dissects a work of literature. Michael Intintoli’s project is somewhat different. For him, the soap is a cultural product mediated and created by corporate interests. It is the produ ction of soaps, then, that is at the center of his Taking Soaps Seriously . To understand the creation of soap operas, Intintoli adopted an ethnographic methodology that required a rather long siege on the set of “Guiding Light.” Like a good anthropologis t, he picked up a great deal about the concerns and problems that drive the production of a daily soap opera. For the novice there is much to be learned here . . . . But the book stops short of where it should ideally begin. In many ways, “Guiding Light ” was simply the wrong soap to study. First broadcast in 1937, “Guiding Light” is the oldest soap opera in the United States, owned and produced by Procter and Gamble, which sells it to CBS. It is therefore the perfect soap to study for a history of the changing daytime serial. But that is not Intintoli’s project . . . . Taking Soaps Seriously is a good introduction to the production of the daily soap opera. It analyzes soap conventions, reveals the hierarchy of soap production, and describes a sli ce of the corporate production of mass culture. Regrettably, it reads like an unrevised dissertation and misses an important opportunity to probe the changing nature of soap production and the unarticulated ideological framework in which soaps are created . Polishing the Book Review After you’ve completed your review, be sure to proofread it carefully for errors and typos. Double - check your bibliographic heading — author, title, publisher — for accuracy and correct spelling as well. For free help at an y stage of the writing process: Writing Tutorial Services Wells Library Information Commons Indiana University 855 - 6738 www.indiana.edu/~wts/ See our website for hours, times, and locations Revised 08/11/11 Writing Book Reviews A book review t ells not only what a book is about, but also how successfully the book explains itself. Professors often assign book reviews as practice in careful, analytical reading. As a reviewer, you bring together the two strands of accurate, analytical reading and strong, personal response when you indicate what the book is about and what it might mean to a reader (by explaining what it meant to you). In other words, reviewers answer not only the what but the so what question about a book. Thus, in writing a revi ew, you combine the skills of describing what is on the page, analyzing how the book tried to achieve its purpose, and expressing your own reactions. Reading the Book As you are reading or preparing to write the review, ask yourself these questions: Wha t are the author’s viewpoint and purpose? Are they appropriate? The viewpoint or purpose may be implied rather than stated, but often a good place to look for what the author says about his or her purpose and viewpoint is the introduction or preface. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Author: Malcolm Gladwell Category: Art of Living Other name: Diana C. Website: http://motsach.info Date: 14-October-2012 Page 1/127 http://motsach.info Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell Introduction - The Statue That Didn’t Look Right In September of 1983, an art dealer by the name of Gianfranco Becchina approached the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. He had in his possession, he said, a marble statue dating from the sixth century BC. It was what is known as a kouros-a sculpture of a nude male youth standing with his left leg forward and his arms at his sides. There are only about two hundred kouroi in existence, and most have been recovered badly damaged or in fragments from grave sites or archeological digs. But this one was almost perfectly preserved. It stood close to seven feet tall. It had a kind of light-colored glow that set it apart from other ancient works. It was an extraordinary find. Becchina’s asking price was just under $10 million. The Getty moved cautiously. It took the kouros on loan and began a thorough investigation. Was the statue consistent with other known kouroi? The answer appeared to be yes. The style of the sculpture seemed reminiscent of the Anavyssos kouros in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, meaning that it seemed to fit with a particular time and place. Where and when had the statue been found? No one knew precisely, but Becchina gave the Getty’s legal department a sheaf of documents relating to its more recent history. The kouros, the records stated, had been in the private collection of a Swiss physician named Lauffenberger since the 1930s, and he in turn had acquired it from a well-known Greek art dealer named Roussos. A geologist from the University of California named Stanley Margolis came to the museum and spent two days examining the surface of the statue with a high-resolution stereomicroscope. He then removed a core sample measuring one centimeter in diameter and two centimeters in length from just below the right knee and analyzed it using an electron microscope, electron microprobe, mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray fluorescence. The statue was made of dolomite marble from the ancient Cape Vathy quarry on the island of Thasos, Margolis concluded, and the surface of the statue was covered in a thin layer of calcite-which was significant, Margolis told the Getty, because dolomite can turn into calcite only over the course of hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In other words, the statue was old. It wasn’t some contemporary fake. The Getty was satisfied. Fourteen months after their investigation of the kouros began, they agreed to buy the statue. In the fall of 1986, it went on display for the first time. The New York Times marked the occasion with a front-page story. A few months later, the Getty’s curator of antiquities, Marion True, wrote a long, glowing account of the museum’s acquisition for the art journal The Burlington Magazine. “Now standing erect without external support, his closed hands fixed firmly to his thighs, the kouros expresses the confident vitality that is characteristic of the best of his brothers.” True concluded triumphantly, “God or man, he embodies all the radiant energy of the adolescence of western art.” The kouros, however, had a problem. It didn’t look right. The first to point this out was an Italian art historian named Federico Zeri, who served on the Getty’s board of trustees. When Zeri was taken down to the museum’s restoration studio to see the kouros in December of 1983, he found himself staring at the sculpture’s fingernails. In a way he couldn’t immediately articulate, they seemed wrong to him. Evelyn Harrison was next. She was one of the world’s foremost Page 2/127 http://motsach.info  PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT :)