Team of Rivals The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln PPT

This assignment’s goal is to use your book selection for your Book Review.

Once you have made your observations and assessments of the work under review, carefully survey your notes and attempt to unify your impressions into a statement describing the purpose or thesis of your review. Check out our handout on thesis statements. Then, outline the arguments that support your thesis.

Your arguments should logically develop the thesis. Unlike more formal academic writing, that logic may initially emphasize the author’s argument while you build your own during the review. The relative emphasis depends on the nature of the review. Suppose your readers may be more interested in the work; you may want to make the work and the author more prominent. Suppose you want the review to be about your perspective and opinions. In that case, you may structure the review to privilege your observations over (but never separate from) those of the work under review. What follows is just one of many ways to organize a review.

For this Book Review, the length expectations are about 2,000 words; consider each page containing about 500 words (not including cover or reference pages).

Introduction

Since most reviews are brief, many writers begin with a catchy quip or anecdote that succinctly delivers their argument. But you can introduce your review differently depending on the discussion and audience, and the Writing Center’s handout on introductions can help you find an approach that works. In general, you should include the following:

The author’s name, the book title, and the central theme.

Relevant details about who the author is and where they stand in the genre or field of inquiry. You could also link the title to the subject to show how the title explains the subject matter.

Book context and review: Place your review in a framework that makes sense to your audience and directs the readers to your “take” on the book. Perhaps you want to situate a book about the Cuban revolution in Cold War rivalries between the United States and the Soviet Union. Another reviewer might want to consider the book in the Latin American social movements framework. Your choice of context informs your argument.

The thesis of the book. If you are reviewing fiction, this may be difficult since novels, plays, and short stories rarely have explicit arguments. But identifying the book’s particular novelty, angle, or originality allows you to show what specific contribution the piece is trying to make.

Your thesis about the book.

Summary of content

This summary should be brief, as analysis takes priority. In your assessment, you’ll hopefully back up your assertions with concrete evidence from the book.

The necessary amount of summary also depends on your audience. Graduate students, beware! If you are writing book reviews for colleagues—to prepare for comprehensive exams, you may want to devote more attention to summarizing the book’s contents. On the other hand, if your audience has already read the book—such as a class assignment on the same work—you may have more liberty to explore more subtle points and emphasize your argument. See our handout on summary for more tips.

Analysis and evaluation of the book

It would be best to organize your analysis and evaluation into paragraphs that deal with single aspects of your argument. This arrangement can be challenging when your purpose is to consider the book as a whole. Still, it can help you differentiate elements of your criticism and clearly pair assertions with evidence.

You do not necessarily need to work chronologically through the book as you discuss it. Given the argument you want to make, you can organize your paragraphs more usefully by themes, methods, or other book elements.

If you find it helpful to include comparisons to other books, keep them brief, so the book under review remains in the spotlight.

Avoid excessive quotations and give a specific page reference in parentheses when quoting. Remember to state many of the author’s points in your own words.

Conclusion

Sum up or restate your thesis or make the final judgment regarding the book. You should not introduce new evidence for your argument in conclusion, and you can introduce new ideas that go beyond the book if they extend the logic of your thesis.

This paragraph must balance the book’s strengths and weaknesses to unify your evaluation. Did the body of your review have three negative paragraphs and one favorable one? What do they all add up to? The Writing Center’s handout on conclusions can help you make a final assessment.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Review the book before you, not the text you wish the author had written. You can and should point out shortcomings or failures, but don’t criticize the book for not being something the book never intended to be.

With any luck, the book’s author worked hard to find the right words to express her ideas. It would be best if you attempted to do the same. Precise language allows you to control the tone of your review.

Never hesitate to challenge an assumption, approach, or argument. Be sure to cite specific examples to back up your assertions carefully.

Present a balanced argument about the book’s value to its audience. You’re entitled—and sometimes obligated—to voice strong agreement or disagreement. But remember that a bad book takes as long to write as a good one, and every author deserves fair treatment. Harsh judgments are difficult to prove and can give readers the sense that you were unfair in your assessment.

Select a 150-page or longer book about a global leader (business, sports, entertainment, political, theology, education, military, etc.) who has a global leadership impact in a crisis leadership setting.

You are responsible for reviewing Crisis Leadership and the Learning Organization (Chapter 12) and using the concepts and theories of this chapter to help you assess the leader’s actions. You will create a PowerPoint presentation about your paper to share with the class.

The Book Review paper content (four to five pages) focuses on critically analyzing and assessing your chosen leader regarding critical theories and concepts used in Chapter 12 (pages 428-458). The leaders can be effective and efficient or ineffective and inefficient, as you can learn from studying both types of leadership character.