History 353 Y

A critical book review is much more than just a summary or a detailed description of the work under consideration. In a book review, you define, outline and then judge the argument that the author is making and assess how he or she develops this argument throughout the book. Your aim is to analyze and interrogate the author's position on a certain topic as well as to explain how and why that author advances his or her argument in a particular way. Your analysis should be informed by lectures, by what you have read in Davies and in the relevant selections from the course reader, as well as by any other "extra" reading that you have done about your chosen topic. Under "recommended readings" on the syllabus you will find a number of suggestions for most topics. The purpose of this supplementary reading is to give you a sense of where the scholarship on a given topic stands and where the book that you are reviewing fits in. Some of the questions that your review should consider:

• What is the author's argument or thesis?
• How does the author position him or her self with respect to the other literature on that particular topic? Does the author reject previous interpretations and offer a brand new analysis, or is he or she "filling in" a hole or a gap in the literature and writing about something that has not been written about before? It is important to take notice of when and where the book was written.
• Does the author offer a substantially new analysis of an issue or event or person? Why does the author believe that his or her work will make a contribution to our understanding of a given topic? Why did the author write the book?
• How does the author illustrate or build his or her position? What examples, "proof" or "evidence" does the author provide?
• What sort of sources did the author use to conduct his or her research?
• Are you convinced by the author's interpretations, arguments and conclusions?
• What did the author do particularly well?
• What are some of the weaknesses of the work?
• Does the work have a discernable bias? What preconceptions inform the author's analyses?

Be sure to provide complete references for all the sources that you use. Use proper bibliographic and footnote / endnote style. (Hand-outs outlining this format will be distributed in class).

Please note that all books cover the period from the 10th c up to and including the partitions of Poland in the late 18th c.

1. Maria Bogucka, The Lost World of the 'Sarmatians': Custom as a Regulator of Polish Social Life in Early Modern Times (Warsaw: PAN, 1996).
   
2. Richard Butterwick, Poland's Last King and English Culture: Stanislaw August Poniatowski 1732-1798 (Oxford University Press, 1998).
   
3. Harry E. Dembkowski, The Union of Lublin: Polish Federation in the Golden Age (NY: Columbia University Press, 1982).
   
4. Janusz Duzinkiewicz, Fateful Transformations: The Four Years' Parliament and the Constitution of May 3, 1791 (Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1993).
   
5. Robert I. Frost, After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 1655-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
   
6. Piotr Gorecki, Economy, Society and Lordship in Medieval Poland, 1100-1250 (NY: Holmes and Meir, 1992).
   
7. Paul W. Knoll, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy. Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320-1370 (University of Chicago Press, 1972).
   
8. Bogna Lorence-Kot, Child-Rearing and Reform: A Study of the Nobility in 18th Century Poland (Greenwood Press, 1985).
   
9. Jerzy Lukowski, Liberty's Folly. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century, 1697-1795 (NY: Routledge 1991).
   
10. Jerzy Lukowski, The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795 (NY: Longman, 1999).
    
11. Taddeusz Manteuffl, trans. and intro. by Andrew Gorski, The Formation of the Polish State: The Period of Ducal Rule 963-1194 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1982).
    
12. J. Rosman, The Lords' Jews. Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Eighteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1990).
    
13. Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes. Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973).