How to Find Book Reviews

What is a book review?

A book review is a critical article written about a published book. Most often, reviews are written shortly after the work is published; however, some well known books continue to be reviewed for many years. In general, book reviews can be good sources for:

• plot summary
• author biography
• background information (historical events, social trends, etc.)
• insight into how a book was received by the community upon its original publication
• strengths and weaknesses if the content

Book reviews vary in length and depth depending on the purpose of the review. Lengthy reviews, found in journals such as the American Historical Review, examine a book’s scholarly merits, as well as information about the political and social climate of the era discussed in the book. Brief reviews, often found in magazines such as Publishers Weekly, are usually intended to provide little more than a summary. If you need substantial reviews, be sure you know which sources to provide these, so that you don’t end up with a handful of one-paragraph reviews.

Considerations Before You Begin Looking for a Review

1. Be sure you know the:
   • complete title of the book
   • author’s full name
   • original year of publication
2. Where you begin looking for a book review depends on:
   • when the book was published
     • For newer books (in the last 20 years or so) reviews can usually be located in an electronic database. Reviews of older books are usually found by using print indexes to journals. Of course, there will be exceptions.
   • what aspect of the book interests you
     • Are you interested in its literary merits? Or are you interested in this book’s effect on a certain field of study? Are you interested in the how this book interprets past events, or more interested in the style, tone and character development? Ask yourself these important questions, because the answers may determine where you look for a review.

Finding a Review

Electronic Sources for Book Reviews

Databases index a variety of journals and newspapers that review books. In most of the databases, book reviews can be located by keyword searching for the title of the book and the word “review.” Sometimes, just the title of the book will retrieve relevant documents. You may need to try searching with various combinations of the title and “reviews” or “review” or “book review” or “book reviews.”

General databases to try:

• Academic Search (Ebsco)
• JSTOR
• Lexis/Nexis
• Project Muse
• ProQuest Newstand

Most discipline-specific databases will also index book reviews. For example, if you want a review of a new book in psychology, check in PsycInfo; similarly, if it’s an historical book, check in America: History and Life or Historical Abstracts. Use the same searching technique as above.

Subject databases to try:

• America: History and Life
• Historical Abstracts
• Elsevier Science Direct
• PsycInfo
• Sociological Abstracts

Look for the , (a service powered by SFX) provides direct links from a database citation to the full text of the article (if available) or other options for obtaining that article. More Information.

Print Sources for Book Reviews

(located Reference Index Area)
Book Review Digest 1906-present
Book Review Index 1965-present
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature 1900-present
New York Times Index 1851-2000
Nineteenth Century Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature 1800-1899
Poole's Index to Periodical Literature 1802-1906
An Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities 1961-1990
Index to Book Reviews in Historical Periodicals 1972-1979
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals 1886-1974

For most print indexes, you’ll need to find the volume for the year in which your book was published and then look up your book by title. You may want to check the volumes for a few years after the original publication date, in case a review was published later.

The print indexes will give a citation for the book review (in which magazine it is located), not the full-text. For the full-text, you’ll need to consult the Snoopy Library Catalog to see if we have the journal title in which the review is located.

For Additional Assistance:

Come to the Reference Desk on the second floor of the University Library. We'll be happy to help you find additional information.