World's worst book review?
A scholarly book review should do three things: (1) Describe the contents of the book. What is the book about, and what does it cover? (2) Describe the scholarly context of the book. Where does the book fit within the literature, how does it relate to other works in terms of data, theory, or methods, etc. and, (3) Evaluate the book critically. I've written a lot about book reviews in this blog; for an overview, see my earliest such post . I have just read what may be the worst book review I have ever seen. I'll keep this anonymous to protect the guilty. Scholar A is reviewing an edited volume. In the first paragraph of the review, this person states that they will review here Scholar B's chapter on Topic C, "because as a lead editor, Scholar B's chapter may set the tone for much of the volume, and also because it is an archaeology I know." The review goes on to talk about this one chapter, with almost no mention of the other chapters. Amazing. A review of one...