Thomas Standage’s An Edible History of Humanity”. Book Report

The assignment should be structured as a normal essay, with some additional requirements and considerations.
- Assume that your audience has not read the book. You may direct your essay towards a very general audience or a more specific one (your choice how to define this audience), but in either case, your goal is to provide enough relevant information to help the reader of your essay to decide whether to buy or at least read it.

Book Report Assignment Guidelines                                                                                                  

The book report will be a 1000-1200 word essay reviewing Thomas Standage’s An Edible History of Humanity”.

The assignment should be structured as a normal essay, with some additional requirements and considerations.

                - Assume that your audience has not read the book. You may direct your essay towards a very general audience or a more specific one (your choice how to define this audience), but in either case, your goal is to provide enough relevant information to help the reader of your essay to decide whether to buy or at least read it.

                - The essay will therefore involve both informing and persuading.

                - In terms of information, your essay must identify the author and the title of the work being reviewed. Additional bibliographic information (publisher, date of publication) should be provided.

- If the book has a genre or is part of an identifiable “controversy”, or a series of books, or a response to another text (and so on), mention these facts.

- The cost is optional. Additional information about the author (biographical details, current occupation, other publications) or text is not necessary, but if provided should not be a substantial part of the essay.

                - Your essay must also briefly summarize the text.

                - Say what, if anything, the author’s thesis is. If the book strikes you as serving a particular purpose or coming from a distinct perspective, mention these.

                - Explain briefly the subject matter of the book. If necessary, provide some background information. You can break down the (table of) contents. What are the author’s main points? If the author follows a pattern or plan of organization, describe it.

                - If this is relevant here, explain the audience, who the book is apparently for.

                - The persuasive element of your essay involves achieving two goals: analyzing the book and evaluating it.

                - Your analysis of the book should focus on one, noteworthy, major element that can serve as an example of “the book as a whole” to a potential reader. This can be:

                               - a deeper discussion of a sample chapter.

                               - one of the author’s key themes or arguments, not restricted to a single chapter.

                               - the author’s method of argument or presentation, the author’s evidence, a bias or blind spot, if you can find one, or the author’s conclusion(s). Does the author make any unstated or unexamined assumptions?

                - The purpose of this analysis is to show something about the book – examine a part that reveals something about the whole.

                - Your analysis by itself should be “neutral”, and supported by observation of the text (quotations), but can be linked to your eventual evaluation.

                - The essay’s evaluative element is the conclusion, either positive or negative (and for whom, from what perspective), of your review. You can refer to any of these matters in your evaluation:

                               - The correctness of the author’s premises, or observations, or conclusions.

                               - The validity, logical coherence, “fairness” or other factors of the author’s argument.

                               - The appropriateness of the book for a (particular) audience (this can include its completeness, level of discourse, professionalism, or other factors)

                               - The effectiveness of the book. Was it persuasive? Was it sufficiently informative? (You can answer from your own, or the intended audience’s perspective.) How, if at all, did it change or add to your knowledge? How did you respond to it?

                - Remember that your final goal is either to recommend the book, or not, and make your reasons clear.

Do you need to quote the text?

Yes; do not simply generalize. Show us the author’s own words.

Do you need a bibliography?

No, if you are only quoting from the book itself. You can, but do not need to, refer to other texts. If you do, you need a bibliography.

What structure or order should you follow?

This is up to you. It makes sense to begin with “basic information” about the who and the what (maybe after a “hook”) and to end with your “thumbs up or down”. But beyond this, the order of points you present should make sense in terms of your approach to the book. You can mix summary and analysis, or analysis and evaluation. You can begun with your conclusion (especially if it is a surprising claim) and then work backwards to justify it.

How many paragraphs? Again, this is up to you and your sense of how your ideas should be divided. It makes sense to have at least one paragraph for each of the important elements of the review (basic information, summary of the contents, analysis and evaluation). But these parts of your essay do not need to be equally weighted. You do not need a separate, formal introduction or conclusion paragraph.