Gaddis landscape of history summary

Week 2. Book Review Assignment Instructions

Central to understanding the secondary literature in history is completing book reviews. You get practice evaluating the argument and seeing what an author does skillfully and may also need to work on. For this assignment you will review John Lewis Gaddis' book Landscape of History to evaluate his perspective on building your understanding of the past. Review your instructions and rubric to guide you through this process (this is below)

HIEU 390

The purpose of a book review for the historian is to analyze the arguments of the writer. This allows the person writing the review to succinctly state the objectives and the methodology of the author. In this vein the book review needs to be a clear and concise description of the author’s goal and purpose for writing and an evaluation of how well the author accomplished this task. In this process you can ask yourself how the author used primary and secondary resources to make his point. You can and should look at the worldview and experience of the author to determine his or her place in scholarship. If your author is a European historian writing on African history, his credibility may be somewhat diminished. Finally, avoid stating what the author should have done, if it is outside the scope of what he or she was writing.

The book that you will review is The Landscape of the Past by John Lewis Gaddis and is included as a free resource in your course through the library. [This is attached via this post via PDF format.] Your book review should be half summary and half analysis. Too much summary and you have produced a book report, too much analysis your reader may not have context to understand what you have discussed. Find a good balance to build context, then delve into the critique of the argument.