William Cronon’s Changes in the Land.

Write a review of William Cronon’s Changes in the Land.

Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. By William Cronon.

New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.

No outside research is needed for this assignment.

II. How to Write a Book Review

A book review has four main sections: an introduction that provides some context for

understanding the book; a summary of the book’s argument and content; a section that evaluates

or criticizes the book in some way; and a brief conclusion that wraps up your thoughts about the

book and its relative strengths and weaknesses.

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A. Introduction

There are numerous ways to write a book review introduction. Some scholars aim to provide

context for the book by referring to factors or issues external to the book itself: one reviewer of

Changes in the Land, for instance, opened his review by noting that the book was “going to have

a long and happy life in the classroom,” meaning the book was primed to be assigned as a

textbook for history classes across the country (can you offer any evidence in support of this

contention?). Some writers open their reviews with references to the author or his or her previous

works, or the larger intellectual climate that informs the book. Other authors open their review

by paraphrasing an episode or section of the book they find interesting or illustrative of the

book’s larger framework or argument.

For this paper, you should do the latter and begin your review with a discussion or summary of

some aspect of the book that you think best illustrates what the book is about. There is no right or

wrong example to choose here.Just keep in mind that the purpose of the introduction is to

provide the reader with a platform from which to understand both the book being reviewed and

the review itself.

NOTE: Somewhere in your introduction you MUST clearly identify what you think the book’s

main argument(s) is.B. Summary

This section is straightforward: You need to summarize the main points of the book and the

various details and supporting evidence the author puts forth in support of his/her arguments.

Reviewers typically do this in a variety of ways. The easiest way is to simply summarize the

book chapter by chapter, or section by section (published reviews rarely do this, but this method

is acceptable for the purposes of this paper). Another tactic is to identify two or three main

themes of the book and then point to specific sections of the book that highlight those themes. A

third way reviewers summarize books is to recap the book’s chronological sweep or describe its

organizational structure and then relay different episodes from the book that highlight the book’s

progression from chapter or section to section.

Ask yourself this: Can I boil the book down to a single sentence (or even two, three, or four

sentences)?

III. Evaluation/Critique

The third section of a review evaluates and critiques (or criticizes) the book. Here you need to

address what you think are the book’s central weaknesses. This is probably the most difficult

section to write for undergraduate students. You’ll notice that the authors of the published

reviews we read assess the book from a variety of viewpoints, most of which are steeped in the

authors’ knowledge of various scholarly literatures, or even close readings of the book’s

argument and evidence.

For this section you should address what you think the book does well and what it does not do

well. What sections of the book did you find compelling? What sections of the book didn’t sit

right with you or did you just not get or understand? Don’t just write “I didn’t like the book” or

“I thought the book was really interesting.” You must try to go deeper that that. Explain WHY

you liked the book, why you found the book (or sections of the book) compelling; or WHY you

didn’t like the book or what sections of the book you found confusing.

Other questions to consider: Is the book contradictory in any way? Does the author make an

argument in one chapter that is contradicted in another? Also, are certain arguments better

supported than others? Does the author rely too heavily on one source or a series of sources?

IV. Conclusion

If someone at a cocktail party asked you what you thought of the book, what you would say?

Your conclusion should be what you would say at that cocktail party. It should be brief—just a

sentence or two—and briefly highlight your overall impression and final thoughts.

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