About Book Reviews
Book reviews are useful for quickly evaluating books you are considering for your research.
They can also help you gage the critical reception of older works when they were initially published and help you get a feel for the scholarship in your field during that time period.
Reading book reviews can help you develop your research skills as well. Learning to read actively and critically evaluate texts will help enormously as you write up your own research and engage in the scholarly conversation in your field.
Reviews in popular sources like newspapers and magazines will appear shortly after a book is published and usually contain a brief summary and critical assessment of the work to help you decide whether or not you want to read it.
Reviews in scholarly publications may appear years after a work is published. They typically offer a thorough analysis of the text -- its thesis, arguments, and sources consulted -- and consider how it compares to other works on the subject.
Subject-Specific Sources for Book Reviews
Most periodical indexes include book reviews, so check the Research Guide in your subject area to find recommended resources.
Books About Book Reviews
Scholarly Book Reviewing in the Social Sciences and Humanities by ISBN: 031329514XPublication Date: 1998-01-30
Selected Sources for Book Reviews
- Book Review Digest Plus This link opens in a new window
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Reviews of fiction and nonfiction in the humanities, social sciences, general sciences, and popular topics published in English since 1983. Includes over 600,000 full-text book reviews and more than 2 million citations to reviews. Textbooks, government publications, and technical books in law and the sciences are not included. Book reviews may also be found in Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, Project Muse, and most subject-specific databases.
- Database Highlight: Book Review Digest PlusRead about using this database and about book reviews in general on the Mina Rees Library blog.
- Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1903-1982 This link opens in a new window
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Provides excerpts from and citations to reviews of adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction titles in the humanities, social sciences, general sciences, and popular topics published in English from 1903 through 1982. Covers 300,000 books and cites over 1.5 million book reviews found in over 500 popular magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. Entries include bibliographic information and book summaries. Book reviews may also be found in Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, Project Muse, and most subject-specific databases. - Book Review Index This link opens in a new window
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A comprehensive online guide to book reviews that includes more than 5.6 million review citations from thousands of publications, with linking to more than 630,000 full-text reviews. Contains the entire back file of Book Review Index print content from 1965 to the present. - Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
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Includes reviews from general, popular, scholarly, and specialized periodicals. Indexes over 12,000 journals and reference sources in all subjects, with text from over 6,000 publications. Includes transcripts and audio of NPR (National Public Radio) programs. - Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
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Includes reviews from general, popular, scholarly, and specialized periodicals. Interdisciplinary full-text database. Full text of over 8,700 journals, including 7.900 peer-reviewed journals, with indexing for another 4,000 titles. While full text is available as far back as 1887 for a few titles, the text of most titles is available only for the past decade or two. Also includes the text of pamphlets, conference papers, conference proceedings, and educational reports.
- H-NetH-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences is an online scholarly review resource.
- Library & Information Science Source This link opens in a new window
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Includes over 460 full-text journals in library and information science and indexing for hundreds of journals, books, research reports, and proceedings. Coverage dates back to 1905. - London Review of Books This link opens in a new window
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Full text of every issue of the London Review of Books from 1979 to the present. Covers arts and culture, biography and memoir, history and classics, literature and criticism, philosophy and law, politics and economics, psychology and anthropology, and science and technology. - New York Review of Books This link opens in a new window
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Full text of all New York Review of Books content from the first issue in 1963 to the present. Browse by year or issue or search across the archive by article title, author, book, contributor, or subject.
- New York Times Book Review (1997-present)In Arts Premium Collection (1997-) and Literature Resources from Gale (2001-).
- ProQuest (All Databases) This link opens in a new window
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Search across all ProQuest databases at once. OneSearch is another cross-database search option, allowing searching of even more databases and the CUNY Catalog. - Readers' Guide Full Text Mega This link opens in a new window
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Includes indexing of over 450 periodicals from 1983 to the present and searchable full text of articles from over 250 popular general-interest periodicals from 1994 to the present. PDF page images of full-text articles provide access to illustrations, photographs and other graphical content. - Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 This link opens in a new window
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Provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 popular general-interest periodicals from 1890-1982, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. - TLS: Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, 1902-2019 This link opens in a new window
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An international publication with contributors from around the world covering literature and criticism, history, science, politics, and art. Includes every issue of TLS from 1902 through 2019, which can be searched or browsed by book title, author, book editor, translator, or contributor (reviewer, essayist, or illustrator). Print issues of TLS from 1963 to 1974 and from 2020 to the present are shelved by title in the library’s periodical collection on the second floor of the library.