Chemists and Biologists perform much of their research in laboratories. The library is the historian's laboratory, and books are often the tools of our research. Part of succeeding in an upper-division history course is learning how historians work. The single most basic skill for any historian is to know how to read a historical monograph critically and thoroughly. That means knowing the parts of a book, grasping the arguments of its author, and understanding other historians' criticisms and analyses of that book. It also means that historians must be able to explain to others efficiently where they found the information or interpretations they use in their own work. Since historians are entrusted with the past, they carry a lot of responsibility for getting it right. They must check their sources for bias, confirm their information from as many sources as possible, try as hard as they can to be objective in their own work, and make sure someone else has checked their work before they publish it. This exercise is designed to help students develop some of those skills. Everyone is an historian to some extent. It's important to be a good one.
What is a monograph? It is a book written on a specific subject by a single author. It is not a collection of essays edited by an author, not a memoir by someone who took part in the events, not a collection of documents (primary sources) edited by an author, and not a general history of Russia in any given period. Choose your book carefully, and clear it with the professor before you start reading it! The book you choose also must have numbered footnotes or endnotes (bibliographical essays do not count) and it must concern a subject in Russian history since 1860.
Once you have tentatively chosen your book, you must locate one scholarly review of that book before you begin reading it. Your review must be complete, and it must be at least three paragraphs in length. Good sources for reviews of books are The American Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, The Historian, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, The New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books. [NOTE: For books in other fields, such as African History or U.S. History, consult journals appropriate to those fields. See your instructor for a list of journals appropriate to the course you're taking.] Always look in the American Historical Review first. Most of the journals in which you can find reviews of your book are indexed in the Book Review Index and the Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities. Other indexes are the MLA Index and the Humanities Index. Abstracts of reviews can be found in Book Review Digest, but these alone will not satisfy the requirement. In addition, you may not take a review from Choice. If you find an abstract that looks interesting, order the entire review on interlibrary loan! In addition, most journals such as the American Historical Review are indexed each year in the last issue that appears that year. Thus, if a book was published in 1978, one can begin by looking at the index that appears at the end of the volume for 1978, followed by the volume for 1979, 1980, and so on. Where journals are not bound into volumes, check for an index in the last issue published for a given year. If the book doesn't appear in a journal within five years of the book's publication date, then that book probably was not reviewed in that journal. Watch out for translations. If a book was reviewed in its original language, the English translation will probably not be reviewed separately, and it will need to be searched under its original title and copyright date. For purposes of this exercise, however, the original copyright date in any language must be 1965 or later. Remember! If you cannot locate a proper review, you must choose another book. DO NOT BEGIN READING A BOOK UNLESS YOU HAVE A REVIEW OF IT IN HAND AND HAVE CLEARED IT WITH THE PROFESSOR. Ignorance of this requirement will not prevent you from getting an "F" on the exercise. The book is not yours until you can show the professor a photocopied review of it. The first person to show him a review gets the book. Also, DO NOT HOARD BOOKS AND PLEASE, DO NOT MARK IN LIBRARY BOOKS. There is a special place in hell reserved for people who mark up library books right beside those who steal them.
Each of the three sections is defined and described below.
This part is the most involved. It requires a thorough reading of the book. It demands that you comprehend your author's "arguments." Historians use that word to mean the author's interpretation, the case that he/she is making about the subject. When historians confront evidence, whether it's a large number of printed sources or archival records, they must try to make sense of those sources. The "sense" they make is their interpretation. The purpose of their monographs is to present their evidence and "argue" their interpretation of that evidence. Your purpose in this section is to summarize the arguments of the author of your book and indicate some of the evidence used to support those interpretations. Write three sentences--and only three--on each chapter of the book. Begin all of your sentences as follows:
After you have written a trio of sentences for each chapter, write one single five-sentence paragraph at the end of this entire section of your paper summarizing the author's argument as a whole about the subject of the book.
In this section, you have two things to do. First, analyze the argument from the standpoint of the course. What did this book teach you that you did not already know about Russian history? Was the argument convincing? Well-supported? (The professor does not care whether you found it well-written or interesting. Since you chose it, he assumes it was interesting to you. Otherwise, you should not have chosen it.) Secondly, analyze the review of the book. Did the reviewer mostly summarize the book or did he/she evaluate it critically? Did he/she agree with the author's interpretation? Why or why not? Did he/she have criticisms? What were they? Do you find the reviewer's criticisms, if any, germane to the author's arguments or peripheral? Do you agree with the reviewer's assessment? Why or why not?