Guidelines for Writing the Book CritiqueThe book critique is to be Political Parties and Elections: A Very Short Introduction. The book critique will be a maximum two double-spaced pages of summary and two double-spaced pages of critique. How to Write the Book CritiqueAs you read the book, you want to focus on the two-to-three or four main ideas in each chapter. Then organize and maybe condense those ideas into ones about political parties and ones about elections. You want to make notes as you read each chapter. Then after finishing the chapter, summarize your notes for that chapter. Its OK to have more than two-to-four main points upon completing the reading of each chapter. But you will have to condense them as you write the critique. Now for the critique: this should be a thoughtful evaluation of the book. Yes, you should assess the books strengths and weaknesses realizing that you have dont have to equal numbers of each. Support with evidence from the book what you see as its strengths and weaknesses. The critique section can also include where you think the book could have improved or gone into more detail. It could include what you learned from the book. And it is certainly appropriate to say why you would or would not recommend the book to others. These are intended as suggestions but not requirements. The book critique should be written IN YOUR OWN WORDS making minimaluse of quotes. Quotes and paraphrases can be cited simply with a page number enclosed by parenthesis at the end of the sentence like this: (p. 76). Note the period goes outside the parenthesis. The book critique should be written at the college level, free of grammatical, punctuation, spelling, and other writing style errors. You can earn 5 bonus points by submitting the book critique to the Writing Center either in person or online. They will send me an email if you do so. Formatting GuidelinesUse the standard MLA four line heading in the upper left-hand corner, except single space it. The first or title of the book critique should be a full bibliographic citation of the book in MLA format. This heading should be centered and single-spaced. Then doublespace once and begin your critique. The critique should be double-spaced with one-inch margins, 12-Point Times New Roman font. The text should be left-justified. Use sub-headings for Summary and Critique
The book critique must be submitted as a Word document(.docx, or.doc). If you dont use MS-Word as your Word processor, most word processors (Google docs, Pages, Open Office, Libre Office) willallow you to save your file in .docx, or.doc format.