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| Research Guides |
| Book Reviews |
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Finding Book Reviews in General Topics, Social Sciences and History |
Check the book you want to review. Look at the title page inside, or the backside of the title page. What is the earliest date you see? Look for the earliest date because a book may be reprinted from an earlier edition, may have first appeared in another country, or in hardback. If you cannot find the date, check the title in COAST and see what year the book was published.
2. Note the First Named Author of the Book.
This may also be found inside the title page or on the cover of the book. If in doubt, check COAST to verify author and date.3. Take the earliest date (e.g. 1968) and add one or two years. (1968-1970)
So you will be looking in book review indexes for the years 1968-1970. This is because it sometimes takes a few months or a couple of years before a title gets reviewed in newspapers or journals.
With the author's name and date of earliest publication, go to start checking one of the sources below.
| Sources for Book Reviews in chronological order |
If your book was published.....
before 1850
Early American Periodicals Index To 1850. (Lower Level Microcard, in red microcard boxes). This eight box microcard set indexes American periodicals from 1728-1850. Most notably for book reviews is: Box 5. Book Reviews: authors and anonymous titles, (1 box). Microcard readers are located on Library Lower Level. Ask at service desk.
19th Century Masterfile. Accesses over one million journal citations (not full text) published from 1786-1922 and includes the contents of several 19th Century periodical indexes. Conduct simple searches such as "longfellow hiawatha" or "darwin evolution".
Times (Of London) Index. (REF AI 21 T46). Look up the topic "book reviews" or "reviews" for the year your book was published. After 1995, you may be able to find a newspaper review online through Lexis Nexis Academic or ProQuest Newspapers. The print newspaper from 1821 is filed under title "London Times" on Microfilm.JSTOR. Electronic Reference Network: Full text access to over 500 journals in history, Asian studies, political science, literature, education, sociology, and African-American studies. Book reviews can be specifically sought by checking "Reviews" box in search form. Some reviews may date back to the early 1800s.
Making of America, Cornell. Provides access to more than 20 full text online magazines from the 1800s. The Cornell site accesses different titles than the University of Michigan site below. It can search for words within any journal article. To search journals, click on Advanced Search link.Making of America (University of Michigan).
Making of America, University of Michigan. Provides access to 10 full text journals (different than the site above) from the 1800s.To search journal articles, click on Go to MoA Journals.
1851 to dateHistorical New York Times Online 1851-2001 Full text online access to the NY Times up to 4 years before the current date. Includes lengthy book reviews. The last 4 years of the Times may be found in Proquest Newspapers.
New York Times Article Archive. A free website produced by the NY Times. It will let you search the entire newspaper back to 1851. Try placing your title in quotes and adding the author's last name. Example: "to have and have not" hemingway
circa 1890-1983
Book Review Digest Retrospective, 1905-1983 Provides brief reviews from more than 100 journals and provides citations to full reviews.
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals. (REF Z1035 A1064). A multi-volume index to thousands of book reviews in journals published between 1886-1974.
Reader's Guide Retrospective. Covers popular magazines from 1890 through 1983. After 1983 see Reader's Guide Abstracts below.
Historical Los Angeles Times, 1881-1984. Full text online access to the LA Times up 1984. years before the current date. After 1984 the LA Times may be found online in Proquest Newspapers.
Humanities and Social Science Index Retrospective. Provides citations to book reviews in scholarly journals published from 1906-1983.
circa 1956 to dateAmerica History & Life. Electronic Reference Network. Covers book reviews in U.S. and Canadian history. Note: book reviews are not found in Historical Abstracts.
1960-1990Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities. (REF Z1007 .I5). Covers about 450 scholarly humanities journals.
circa 1965- to dateBook Review Index. (REF Z1035 A1B6). Provides citations to thousands of book reviews. More comprehensive than the Book Review Digest.
Lexis Nexis Academic. This is a full-text database for newspapers and journals and popular magazines. One particular file for book reviews is the sub file "Arts & Sports" found by clicking on the News File. "Arts & Sports" contains a specific section for searching book reviews.
New York Review of Books. A searchable archive of articles/reviews is available back to since 1963.
circa 1980 to date
Readers Guide Abstracts. Indexes nearly 300 popular magazines. Includes book reviews.
Social Science Abstracts. Indexes scholarly journals in the social sciences. Includes book reviews.
early 1990s to date
Academic Search Elite. Contains full text access to 1300 popular and scholarly journals back to 1990, plus an additional 1800 citation only journals back to 1987. Simply conduct a keyword search for a few words in the title of the book (or the book author's name) plus the word "book". Place "and" between each word.
Amazon Books. You may think of Amazon.com as merely a web site to buy books, but you will find reviews for many books. Sometimes they are reader reviews or Amazon's own reviews, but you will find reviews quoted from sources such as Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature or other reviewing sources.
ArticleFirst. Accesses more than 12,000 journal titles. Contains a wide variety of topics. Simply type in the title of the book and toggle line to the right to search "title word". If you need to narrow it down go to second search line and also type in the last name of the author and toggle to the right to phrase "author".
Booklist.This is the digital version of the American Library Association's Booklist magazine. You can check a current selection of reviews or consult a cumulative index to the magazine.Newspapers. Provides full text access to several hundred U.S., Canadian and British newspapers back to the mid 1990s and you can find book review citations back to the mid 1980s. Search for book reviews by selecting the "advanced search" tab. You can select book reviews under "article type" arrow.
Web of Science. Citation index which includes book reviews listed in over 8500 journals from 1995 to date. Arts, sciences, humanities and social science journals are indexed.Additionally, other subject specific periodical indexes (print and online) contain book reviews.
Other locations for identifying book reviews may found in some subject specific indexes (print format) located in the Reference Collection or in indexes found in the Electronic Reference Network. Many carry sections of "Book Reviews" in their pages. Two examples:For the years 1970-1995, HAPI: Hispanic American Periodicals Index (REF F1401 H36), contains a separate book review section covering many foreign and Spanish language publications relating in Latin American and inter-American issues.
For the years 1967-1993, the Chicano Periodical Index (REF E184.M5 C46) provides a section called "book reviews."
Check with the Reference Librarians for other possibilities.
This page created by
Greg Armento and Tracey Mayfield
University Library, California State University, Long Beach