My esteemed co-blogger Brian asked this in an Orgtheory post and I wanted to follow up. What is the value of doing book reviews? I’ve heard mixed things about graduate students doing them. Some people say they can get your name or agenda out there while other say it’s not much help in terms of your career.
For me, it seems like the benefits outweigh the costs in most cases. Someone asks you to read a book (which you probably would have read anyway if it’s in your field) and type up a short review of it. Even writing a 500 piece forces you to think critically and could really open your eyes to new ideas.
On the other hand, what do you do if someone asks you to review a book which just looks really uninteresting? Can you turn down an editor’s request because you think it’ll just be a waste of your time? Also, I worry that giving a lukewarm or bad review might piss off the wrong people. How does one avoid these problems?
And finally, how do you even start doing book reviews? Is it as easy of emailing the journal editor with your CV or do they hunt you down because they heard about you through word of mouth?
- Josh McCabe
When I was in grad school a fellow student emailed her CV to Contemporary Soc and received a request to review a book shortly thereafter. I’d give it a try if you’re interested. I know they’re always looking for reviewers.
I don’t see many costs with doing book reviews, as long as it’s a book you’d like to read anyway. The benefit is that it’s a professionalizing experience.
I’ll second what Brayden King said Josh. Yes, book reviews can be alot of work. But, keeping up with – and writing about – the contemporary literature in your specialty area, I think, cultivates us prospective scholars.
I concur with Brian and Brayden – don’t expect a career boost, but it can be a valuable experience.
I’d also add that it can be a way to introduce new ideas. Yes, you can summarize the book, but you can always raise interesting new points that would be hard to do in other formats.
May I suggest that book reviewing can be a valuable intellectual exercise.
First, it requires you make sure that you have understood the author’s argument, and to explain it for the reader in a concise and clear way — often better than the author has over a few hundred pages.
Second, it makes you formulate on paper the strengths and weaknesses of the author’s arguments and your own ideas, which may or may not be in agreement with the author’s.
Third, there are many wrong-headed ideas out there — every discipline suffers from this — and reviews can be away for you to assist readers to see better the errors, mistakes, and/or omissions in the author’s arguments. Besides, debunking nonsense can sometimes be a useful and enjoyable pass time.
And, fourth, doing some book reviewing “forces” you to keep up with some of the literature that you might otherwise let slide. This applies not only to your own area of study, but to read a bit out of your area to broaden your own understanding of the wider world of scholarship.
One should never discount the value of interdisciplinary exploration. What it awakens you to can sometimes be invaluable feedback in thinking about your own specialized area of study.
Richard Ebeling
I agree with the comments here. I passed on a book review request once in grad school because I didn’t feel qualified to review the book in question. In retrospect, that was a mistake. In the last couple of years, I’ve found book reviewing to be an enjoyable and useful intellectual exercise.
Reviewing books makes you a better scholar in a few ways. First, it’s an excellent way to practice analyzing an argument. Since your research involves analyzing others’ arguments anyway, this is a very good way to continue refining your skills. Second, it’s an excellent way to practice writing for publication. Third, it’s a good way to stay abreast of developments in your field. Fourth, it’s a commitment device that forces you to read books that might otherwise slip to the bottom of the pile. Fifth, it makes you look at your own research in a different way. Finally, it’s a good way to build social capital. Being a prolific book reviewer probably won’t make the difference between an adjunct position at a community college and a chaired professorship in the Ivy League, but I would expect it to help at the margin.