Guidelines for Book Review:

A full book review may concern only one book. Its length is about 1500-2000 words. It should

give readers an engaging, informative, and critical discussion of the work. The review should

follow the Guidelines below.

The review should consider (you use as your outline):

The intended audience for the book and who would find it useful

The background of the author(s)

The main ideas and major objectives of the book and how effectively these are

accomplished

The context or impetus for the book – – political controversy, implications of the book for

research, policy, practice, or theory

A comparison with other works on this subject

Constructive comments about the strength and weaknesses of the book

The front page of your review should include:

Your first and last name

Your student id

Author(s) or editor(s) first and last name(s) (please indicate if it is an edited book)

Title of book

Year of publication

Place of publication

Publisher

Number of pages

Price (please indicate paperback or hard cover) if available

ISBN

Book Review

In line with your guidelines, book review grading will be based on the following rubric with 4 components:

• Background of author and audience.
• Discussion of main ideas and objectives.
• The context for the book and comparison with other work on the subject.
• Comments about strengths and weaknesses and implications for research and public policy.

Where each rubric would have a weight of 0.25 and would have 5 categories (5,10,15,20,25). There could be further penalties for poor presentation or grammar. Component Scoring Scale (525 points)

25 (Exceptional): Comprehensive analysis with no gaps. All arguments are backed by specific evidence from the text.

20 (Strong): -5 points if the analysis is clear but misses secondary objectives or provides a generic description of the audience/context.

15 (Satisfactory): -10 points if the report is purely descriptive (summarizing what happened) rather than analytical (explaining why it matters).

10 (Poor): -15 points for significant gaps, such as failing to compare the book to other works or missing the author’s primary thesis.

5 (Minimal): -20 points for surface-level mentions that do not demonstrate the student actually read the book in its entirety.

Furthermore:

• You will get 0 points if you write a book review of a paper or a textbook, no exceptions allowed. You can get some suggestions of books in the first discussion section.
• Plagiarism will not be tolerated, actions would be taken.

The list of permitted books is included in the attachment.