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Structuring your review A book review is a condensed presentation of a book's contents, ideas, and concepts

Sociology

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Structuring your review

A book review is a condensed presentation of a book's contents, ideas, and concepts. Book reviews will be often read by a person who has not or may not ever read the book, so this will their opportunity to learn more about it. As the book review writer, your job is to identify the most important points and ideas to write about. In this case, the books in question are ethnographies, the main product that cultural anthropologists produce based upon their ethnographic research. So, you should be focusing on the main points, important concepts, and their contributions to knowledge and theory in anthropology.

The following is a suggestion on how to structure your review. The suggestions are general and applicable to writing papers and essays for any subject, but specific here because of the very limited page numbers of your assignment. Your readers (myself included) will appreciate organization, clarity, and focus in your writing, and by structuring your review in the following manner, you will have a well-conceived book review.

There are three main sections for a review: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. The Introduction is where you briefly introduce the book, an overview of its contents, and major conclusions. This section should be around one paragraph long. The next and largest section is the Body. The Body of your review is where you will discuss the contents of the book. It may be tempting to go chapter by chapter, but it will be more fruitful if you try to write about the major themes that the author is tackling. You can use examples from the text to illustrate those themes. This section should be around 2-2.5 pages long. The final section is the Conclusion. Now would be the time to include criticism, your own questions or insights. You can also include any outside sources should you wish. Close the review with any final remarks, conclusions, lingering questions, and so on. This section should be around 2 to 3 paragraphs long.

Formatting

The format of the completed review should be as follows:

• Your name, course and section number in top right corner, single spaced• 1-inch margins on all sides• 10 to 12 pt. font and double-spaced for the text• 3 pages minimum• Citations and sources should be in MLA or APA styles• Submit the review in pdf, doc, or docx formats only!

Turnitin plagiarism checker

This assignment will be using Turnitin plagiarism tool to check for plagiarism; you can see your similarity score once you submit your assignment. You will have the opportunity to revise your submission before the due date if your similarity score is high. If you see a score over 15%, I strongly suggest you review and revise your paper to check for proper citation and citing your sources correctly, then submit it again.

Any use of another person's ideas or words, taken directly or paraphrased, without citing the source is plagiarism. This includes taking material from the Internet without citing the website. If you are unsure as to proper citation methods or have any questions or doubts, please contact me. Plagiarism and other forms of cheating will not be tolerated and will result in failure of the course and possible expulsion from this institution. For more information: Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism Links to an external site..

Grading and feedback

The grading rubric for this assignment can be found below. Please pay special attention to this rubric, as these are the criteria that you will be graded upon for this assignment. I will use this rubric to grade your book review, and provide feedback as comments and suggestions in the Grades section of Canvas. For more information: How do I view assignment comments from my instructor?