Reading, Writing, Relishing, Steven E. Gump

Scholarly book reviews can be exceptionally useful. Five minutes spent reading a book review usually yields a greater return than five minutes spent reading an academic journal article. And the book review is almost always more enjoyable. That’s one reason The Independent Review has greatly expanded its book review section. A decade ago (volume 19) we published thirty-two book reviews. That’s more than most journals, which don’t publish any. Last year (volume 29) we ran twenty-one reviews in the printed portion of TIR and another sixty three “web-exclusive” reviews online, a feature we began in 2015.

If you subscribe to the print edition of TIR and never check the web version for book reviews, please do so! Otherwise you will miss a lot.

Most book reviews would be even more beneficial if their authors were to Review Scholarly Books. However, the opportunity cost of reading the book is simply too high for most potential readers. Accordingly, one purpose (not the only purpose) of this review is to distill some of Gump’s guidance into something much more manageable.

Gump has written more than 150 reviews and is book review editor of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing, so he speaks with considerable experience. More importantly, he has read widely about this hidden art and has considered the matter systematically and thoughtfully. I profited considerably from reflecting on his insights, even though I am a seasoned reviewer (I recently surpassed four hundred books) and book review editor (as book review editor for EH. Net, I commissioned and edited a little more than two thousand economic history book reviews between 1996 and 2021; and since becoming TIR’s editor, I’ve added more than six hundred to the total).

With that background in mind, the aim of this review is to follow Gump’s advice and describe, assess, and announce the book at hand with objectivity, fairness, accuracy, precision, style, and wit—something all good reviews do. (Alas, I’m not sure that all of mine have achieved this end.)

At heart, the message of How to Review Scholarly Books is that “book reviews, not books, [are] the principal engines of change in the history of thought” (p. 15, quoting Nicholson Baker), so you should honor the author, imagine the reader, and make a contribution in your review. You will do this best if you enter into a dialogue with the book as you read it. Gump outlines a step-by-step process for how to read the book and then for how to write the review. His key tips are highlighted using italics, which is a very effective strategy. He recommends sizing up the book before beginning it and then reading it fairly linearly while taking three types of notes—direct quotations, descriptive notes, and editorial comments—then working through these notes in several passes to distill them down into the review. One strategy for beginning the review—often the hardest part—is “BLUF” (bottom line up front), but other approaches work well too. The goal is to grab readers’ attention and keep it.

Although almost all of his advice on how to read, how to write, and how to craft the review is very sound, I was greatly surprised by Gump’s admission that he has “a very hard time writing in books” (p. 57, emphasis in the original). This is unfortunate, as writing in the margins substantially reduces the cost of the entire reviewing process. There’s no need to jump between the book and a pad of paper or screen when reading the book. Even more important, my experience is that writing in the margin facilitates dialogue with the book much more effectively; it helps you think. That’s what margins are for! I am disappointed when I pick up a book that I read as a student—such as my graduate school copy of The Wealth of Nations—and see too few marginal comments. I let down my future self by not sharing thoughts that I could return to decades later in an intertemporal dialogue. I encourage my students to make marginal comments and quote John Adams’s maxim that “Studium sine calamo somnium” (study without a pen is but a dream). Yes, I even write in library books (in pencil, of course). Before I can return them, it often takes a while to erase everything, but in the process I review and distill my comments for future reference. Gump reports that “for a 1,500-word review, I may end up with notes totaling 7,500 to 10,500 words. … My notes … equate to around 10 percent of a work in terms of volume” (p. 68). This strikes me as an extraordinarily and needlessly high number. Imagine the effort of writing/ typing notes that might exceed the length of the longest articles we publish in TIR. I think that simply writing in the margin will cut the opportunity cost of reviewing a book considerably. The notes I transfer to paper from my marginal comments are brief summaries of them, pointing me back to the book to find the passages I want to quote and fuller ideas, both descriptive and editorial, that I want to incorporate into the review. My notes for this review add up to about six hundred or seven hundred words, less than one-tenth of what Gump recommends. (The only downside I see from writing in the margins is that you may end up baring your soul to others who later read your unguarded comments.)

Perhaps our two approaches mark a disciplinary difference. The economist in me says things should be done efficiently. Gump briefly mentions the high opportunity costs of writing book reviews in a couple of places but doesn’t discuss how to reduce these costs. If your only goal in writing reviews is to advance your career and make yourself a better scholar, the writing must be done efficiently. If your goal is to provide a service to humanity, doing so efficiently matters. Even if you are retired, saving time reviewing a book frees up time to review another book!

With the goal of efficiency in mind, here are some of Gump’s important tips on how to write a scholarly book review (with occasional commentary). I have begun sharing this list with TIR’s reviewers.

• Reviews without opinions—without arguments—are simply summaries.
• A book review is not about you, but it is not without you. Let yourself into the review (but not too much).
• Flaws worth mentioning include overlooked or ignored information that would redirect the book’s conclusions; overstatements and inflated claims; factual errors that lead to spurious conclusions; and faulty logic. (Something very important is missing from this list, what might be called a “flawed worldview”—for example, one that sees ordinary people as incapable and undeserving of running their own lives. Ultimately the measure of a book is whether or not it advances the search for truth and makes the world a better place. If it doesn’t, that’s a big flaw.)
• Use the present tense.
• Beware of empty adjectives (for example, “engaging,” “enlightening,” “fascinating,” “captivating,” “stimulating,” “intriguing,” “interesting”).
• Adverbs diminish the force of your prose. Minimize them.
• Make sure to mention how the book transformed you by changing your views.
• Make sure to include an excerptible sentence or two.
• Don’t be mean-spirited or dull.
• Ensure that paragraphs and sentences are not all of similar length. Mix things up.
• Begin paragraphs with different words. (My editorial heart sinks when I read, “In Chapter 1, the author … In Chapter 2, the author … In Chapter 3, the author …)
• Eschew hedge words and noncommittal language.
• Embrace analogies, metaphors, and other figures of speech (but not clichés).
• Be creative (but, of course, not too creative).
• Ask for feedback on reviews before sending them to editors (just as you would for other works of scholarship).

How to Review Scholarly Books is perhaps the least “ideological” book I have ever reviewed. It pushes no agenda, except that it is the reviewer’s duty and privilege to be orderly, informative, honest, and fair. I hope these are virtues everyone can agree on.

Let me know what you think of this review. Feedback is the key to success, not just in markets but in scholarship, as well.