Bret Devereaux

So...an academic book review is a genre, with very specific expectations. It is a functional piece of writing, meant to perform a service to others - like a map, or a technical guide. That's not to say there's no skill in it, but function should come before form. 1/3

I am of the view that folks who don't want to write that elegantly functional, but creatively limited review shouldn't, and should instead go write something else, somewhere else. Editors who would rather edit that something else should also do so. Somewhere else. 2/3

But a review should tell me 1) what the book is about, 2) its organization, argument and themes, 3) the sort of evidence it mobilizes, 4) the degree to which it succeeds at its aims and 5) exactly who the reviewer thinks might benefit from it. Nothing more, nothing less. 3/3

I think I don't agree. I can imagine two books which, for instance, both present a 'modernist' model of Italian agriculture using mostly archaeological evidence, but one is new scholarship for a technical audience and one summarizes existing scholarship for a lay audience.