index for book review

Articles & Databases

Explore our collection of hundreds of online resources and databases. Use our free online content to help with your research, whether it's finding a single article, tracing a family tree, learning a new language, or anything in between.

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Book Review Index Online is a comprehensive source for book reviews from 1965 to the present and covers review published in nearly 500 periodicals and newspapers. 

• Library of Congress
• Research Guides
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Finding Book Reviews Online

Sources for general book reviews.

• Introduction

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Before you start your search you should know the title and author of the book being reviewed. The date of publication will sometimes also be required. Some databases offer a search option to limit search results to book reviews. Where not present, adding a keyword search that includes the phrase "book review" should help. Reviews of popular books are typically published close to their publication dates; find them via book-related websites and indexes that cover general interest periodicals. Reviews of scholarly books may take months to appear in scholarly journals. For more databases that cover scholarly journals, visit the Library of Congress E-Resources Online Catalog .

• Free Web Resources
• Book Review Databases
• Selected General Databases
• Historical Book Review Databases

Free contemporary book reviews are widely available on the web. The sources listed below are some of the most common places to find them.

• Amazon.com External Amazon.com offers book reviews of many of the book titles it sells. Some reviews are by professionals; many are by readers. Find a book and scroll down its entry to read the reviews, where present. For balance, try a variety of positive and negative reviews.
• Barnes & Noble External Barnes and Noble includes professional book reviews with the descriptions of many of the books it sells.
• Complete Review External The Complete Review contains a selected listing of old and new book titles with reviews and links to more reviews.
• GoodReads Reviews External GoodReads offers millions of book reviews contributed by its community members which include librarians, journalists, and many other readers.
• Kirkus Reviews External Kirkus Reviews includes reviews new and forthcoming fiction, non-fiction and Young Adult (YA) books. Kirkus also has a print magazine available by subscription.
• Library Journal Reviews+ External Library Journal reviews books on a wide array of popular and scholarly topics expected to interest a broad spectrum of libraries. Reviews from the most recent 24 months are free online.
• LibraryThing Reviews External LibraryThing Reviews are written by members of the LibraryThing community of readers and book collectors. Reviews are grouped in various ways, including by genre or may be searched by author or title.
• New York Times Book Review (free selections) External A free collection of book reviews published in The New York Times since 1981. A more extensive paid subscription database is also available.
• School Library Journal Reviews+ External Features reviews from School Library Journal from the most recent twenty-four months. Browse by genre, grade level, award winners and other criteria.

Subscription databases are great sources for current and recent book reviews. Many also include historical coverage.

• Children's Literature Review, Vols 1-216

These more general subscription databases cover a wide array of periodicals which include book reviews. Using the phrase "book review" in your search can be effective if no check-box option for book reviews is available in the database's search function.

Some researchers seek reviews that are decades or even centuries old, for example, to see how a book written in the 19th Century was reviewed when it was first released. This listing includes general and book review resources. For the general sources, be sure to Include the phrase "book review" in your search if no check-box option for book reviews is available.

• African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 (Series 1 and Series 2)
• American Business: Agricultural Newspapers
• American Business: Mercantile Newspapers
• American Gazettes: Newspapers of Record
• American Politics: Campaign Newspapers
• American Religion: Denominational Newspapers
• Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690-1876: From Colonies to Nation
• Early American Newspapers, Series 2, 1758-1900: The New Republic
• Early American Newspapers, Series 3, 1783-1922: From Farm to City
• Early American Newspapers, Series 4, 1756-1922: The Rise of Industry
• Early American Newspapers, Series 5, 1777-1922: An Emerging World Power
• Early American Newspapers, Series 6, 1741-1922: Compromise and Disunion
• Early American Newspapers, Series 7: 1773-1922: Reform and Retrenchment
• Early American Newspapers, Series 8, 1844-1922: A Nation in Transition
• Early American Newspapers, Series 9, 1832-1922: Protest and Prosperity
• Early American Newspapers, Series 11, 1803-1899: From Agrarian Republic to World Power
• Early American Newspapers, Series 12, 1821-1900: The Specialized Press
• Early American Newspapers, Series 13, 1803-1916: The American West
• Early American Newspapers, Series 14, 1807-1880: The Expansion of Urban America
• Early American Newspapers, Series 15, 1822-1879: Immigrant Communities
• Early American Newspapers, Series 16, 1800-1877: Industry and the Environment
• Early American Newspapers Series 17, 1844-1922: American Heartland
• Early American Newspapers, Series 18, 1825-1879: Racial Awakening in the Northeast

C19 Index draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (NSTC), The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index, Periodicals Index Online and the Cumulative Index to Niles' Register 18111849 to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.7 million books and official publications, 70,000 archival collections and 20.9 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers. C19 Index now provides integrated access to 13 bibliographic indexes, including more than three million records from British Periodicals Collections I and II, together with the expanded online edition of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (DNCJ).

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E-resource - Book Review Index

1965-present

Comprehensive guide to over 5.6 million book reviews in numerous disciplines, including literature, history, education, psychology, political science, and more. This database covers thousands of indexed publications, including Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Village Voice , and Middle East Policy .   

NOTE: This database defaults initial search results to after 1980. To perform a search for reviews from 1965-1979, go to advanced search, uncheck the box labeled documents with full text, change the date limit to before January 1, 1980, and then enter your search terms.

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For more information about using this database, view the publisher's online tutorial.

University Libraries

• Book Review Index

A comprehensive online guide to book reviews that includes more than five million review citations from thousands of publications, with linking to more than 630,000 full-text reviews. Book Review Index provides reviews of books, periodicals, books on tape and electronic media representing a wide range of popular, academic and professional interests.

• Research guides

Finding Book Reviews

Book review indexes/databases, indexes/databases of book reviews.

• Book Review Digest Plus (current & retrospective) This link opens in a new window Book Review Digest provides excerpts from and citations to reviews of adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction. Retrospective file covers 1908-1982. Current covers 1982-present.
• Book Review Index Online This link opens in a new window An index to more than 600,000 book reviews in all disciplines.
• Choice Reviews (1988 - ) Choice Reviews Online is a database containing reviews of books and electronic resources of interest to those in higher education. The reviews are arranged by academic discipline and broad cross-disciplinary topics. The contents are updated monthly, usually two weeks before the print version is available. Over 6,500 reviews are added each year.
• New York Review of Books This link opens in a new window This database provides access to both the current issue of the New York Review of Books and to an archive of over 50 years of fully searchable material.

• Index to book reviews in the humanities (1960-1990) Call Number: O'Neill Library Reference PN98 .B7 .I366 From vol. 12 (1971) onwards this index contains all the book reviews (children's books being the only exception) appearing in the journals indexed. Prior to 1971 the journals were selectively indexed. The reviews are arranged alphabetically by book author.

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• Last Updated: Aug 12, 2024 2:39 PM
• Subjects: English Language & Literature , General
• Tags: books , reviews

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A book review is an article that is published in a newspaper, magazine, or scholarly work that describes and evaluates a book. Keep in mind while searching for reviews of a book that many books are published each year, only a small fraction of them are reviewed. Reviews are written for different purposes and they will vary in terms of content and depth of evaluation. Since reviews are printed in many different kinds of publications, you may need to search several sources.

Reviews are produced after the publication of a book, so knowing the initial publication date will help refine your search (knowing the exact title and author's name is also necessary). Discovery Search will usually list the publication date of books in our collection. Use WorldCat from OCLC to find publication dates for books not found in Discovery Search. Finding reviews for older books may require using print indexes in addition to recommended databases.

Many sources (online or in print) will only give a citation for the review. Use that citation to track down the complete text of the review.

Reviews differ from literary critiques of books. Critiques explore the style and themes used by an author or genre.

Types of reviews

Book review databases, general interest databases for book reviews.

See also the list of newspaper and magazine databases .

Subject specific databases

Many subject-specific databases will include book reviews. Use the Subject guides or Ask a Librarian for recommendations of relevant resources. Many will include the ability to limit search results to book reviews (check the help links if it is not immediately obvious if this is possible).

• Last Updated: Aug 23, 2024 3:51 AM
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Home / Resources / About

Book Review Index

What is it? Book Review Index is a citation index to reviews of books, periodicals, audio books (on tape or CD), and ebooks. Many of the sources for these reviews are available online (click on the Check MSU Availability link) or in the MSU Libraries' print collection. Contains citations to over 5 million book reviews (covering more than 2 million titles). Thousands of publications are indexed, including journals and national general interest publications and newspapers. Updated several times a year.

Why use it? Citations to book reviews and links to full text.

Coverage: 1965-Present

Access: Available on networked computers on the MSU campus in Bozeman and via the proxy server. A maximum of two simultaneous users can use this database at once.

Vendor: Gale

Learn more: See the Title List for publications indexed.

Subjects: Not assigned

Total interactions: 3603

Rank: 152 out of 315 databases

Rating: 3 out of 5 (based on 3603 out of 2203116 total interactions with all of our databases)

Last updated: 2024-08-13 18:29:20

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How do I find reviews?

• Book Reviews

Getting Started

Reviews for a general audience, reviews for a scholarly audience.

• Film Reviews
• Music Reviews
• Theater Reviews

Do you want to know how a book was received by scholars? Are you trying to determine the quality of a particular book? Or, are you just interested in knowing if a book is worth reading? Book reviews are a great place to start. This guide provides guidance on finding two types of book reviews, those for a general audience and those for a scholarly audience.

Literature and popular works (memoirs, travel writing, manuals, etc.) are often reviewed by journalists or fellow authors upon publication in newspapers or magazines. Use the following databases to find reviews in these publications.

• Book Review Index This link opens in a new window & more less... A comprehensive online guide to book reviews with over five million review citations from thousands of publications.
• Book Review Digest Plus This link opens in a new window & more less... Book Review Digest is a reference database that provides review excerpts and book summaries for current English-language fiction and non-fiction books. Limit of 1 simultaneous user.
• Book Review Digest Retrospective This link opens in a new window 1903-1982 & more less... Indexes and abstracts reviews of English language adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction titles. Reviews are selected from journals in the humanities, sciences, social sciences and library review media.

Other Sources for Book Reviews

Many reviews are published in newspapers and magazines. Use the guides below to find the best databases to search for reviews in these publications.

• How do I find magazines? by Ask a Librarian Updated Jul 29, 2024 720 views this year
• How do I find newspapers? by Ask a Librarian Updated Aug 6, 2024 11425 views this year

Scholarly books are reviewed in academic or peer-reviewed journals and are written by academics. As these reviews place the work in the context of current scholarship, they can take several years to appear after the book was published.

Starting Points

• JSTOR This link opens in a new window Recommended Starting Point . Use Advanced Search and limit to "Reviews". You can also limit by discipline. & more less... A database of back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. All issues of each journal are included in full-text except for the most recent 2-to-5 years.
• IBR Online This link opens in a new window & more less... Multilingual and interdisciplinary index to book reviews, chiefly in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
• Web of Science This link opens in a new window Conduct your search for book or author, and then limit to "Book Reviews". & more less... Authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 10,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 110,000 conference proceedings. You'll find current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage available to 1900. Includes the Science Citation Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Web of Science is especially useful for its citation linking.
• Periodicals Index Online This link opens in a new window & more less... Part of Nineteenth Century Index. Indexes the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences from 1665 to 1995, including many European titles. Includes links to some full-text articles. Dates of full-text coverage vary by title.
• Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window & more less... Database corresponds to International Index, 1907 - March 1965; Social Sciences & Humanities Index, April 1965 March 1974; Humanities Index, April 1974 March 1984; and Social Sciences Index, April 1974 March 1983

Other Databases for Book Reviews

We strongly recommend searching the article database or index that covers the academic literature in a specific field for reviews. Use the Advanced Search option and limit to "Book Reviews" or "Reviews".  Find the best database for book reviews in your field by using our subject guides.

• Library Subject Guides

Book Review Indexes in Print

Below are a few print sources for finding book reviews.

• Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Humanities Journals, 1802-1974 & more less... 10 vols. Ed by Evan Ira Farber. Woodbridge: Research Publications, 1982-1984. Covers 150 literature, philosophy, classics, folklore, linguistics & music journals, from England and the US Organized by primary authors or editors and then by book titles.
• Literary and Historical index to American Magazines, 1800-1850 & more less... Ed by Daniel A. Wells & Jonathan Daniel Wells. Westport: Praeger, 2004.

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Publications with Book Reviews

• London Review of Books Library has on microfilm 1979 - present.
• New York Review of Books This link opens in a new window & more less... New York Review of Books reviews contemporary books in all subject areas.
• New Yorker Library has in print 1925 - present.
• Publishers Weekly Library has in print and microfilm 1873 - present. Recent issues available online via Find It!
• TLS: Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive This link opens in a new window & more less... Covers 1902-2006. This easy-to-navigate, fully-searchable resource is a witness to the cultural revolutions of the last 100 years and offers unparalleled opportunities for tracking the views of influential opinion-makers, the response of their peers, the controversies of the day and how they developed. --Publisher's website
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• Subjects: Social Work
• Updated: Jun 24, 2024 12:04 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/reviews
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• Scholarly Reviews

How to Find Book Reviews: Scholarly Reviews

• Getting Started
• Critical Reviews
• General Interest Reviews

About Scholarly Reviews

Scholarly reviews are written for scholars by scholars. These reviews place the book within the scholarly discourse, compare the book to other works in the field, and analyze the author's methodology, interpretations, and conclusions. Due to this amount of engagement with the book, reviews of academic titles may appear two or three years after publication of the book.

The searches in most of the databases below will find scholarly book reviews in addition to general interest and critical reviews. Scholarly reviews will be published in journals, and tend to be longer and more recent.

Best Bet Library Databases

• Library Catalog Search engine for materials in the library. Includes a list of all the books in the library, and a selection of articles. Does not include all articles owned by the library, but it's a good starting place.

Resources for Recent Reviews

In addition to the resources below, see also subject databases related to the discipline of the book.

Resources for Older Reviews

Research Tip: Book Review Searching

Book review searching.

• Search for the title of the book, enclosed in quotation marks ("World's Best Book")
• If the title is not very distinctive, add the author's last name
• Look for limit to "book review" or add search term "review"

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• Last Updated: Jul 16, 2024 5:51 PM
• URL: https://libguides.williams.edu/book-reviews

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Book Reviews: Multidisciplinary Databases with Reviews

• Multidisciplinary Databases with Reviews
• Social Sciences
• Literary Reviews

Book reviews offer critical reaction to a work, usually within a year or two of its publication. Reviews vary in length and authority but can occasionally be long scholarly essays on a work, an author, or a subject. More often, book reviews supply a summary of the book's content and the reviewer's reactions to it.

This is a selective bibliography of sources for reviews of works in the social sciences and humanities, including some major book reviewing periodicals in various disciplines. Search Franklin under the subject keyword phrase books reviews periodicals to identify additional sources.

General Online Search tools for Book Reviews

• Articles+ Articles+ is a mega-database that indexes the content from many providers, including numerous databases. Note under Content Type, the useful book review limit.
• JSTOR Full-text database of the mostly backfiles of scholarly journals in many fields. For book reviews, choose: Advanced Search and check the box for Reviews.
• New York Review of Books Full-text of the NYRB, 1963-. Access to some of the content is limited due to copyright restrictions.
• New York Times Book Review Link to Franklin Catalog record will show you multiple access points and years covered.
• New York Times Online Use Document TYpe: review to limit your search.
• Times Literary Supplement, 1994- Here also is a Franklin Catalog search for other years and formats of TLS
• Nexis Uni Nexis Uni is a good to find reviews that appear in newspapers and magazines. It is not a good source for reviews published in scholarly journals.
• ISI Web of Knowledge For book reviews, Choose Document Type from the pull-down field menu, then choose Book Review

Sources Good for Older Works

• Periodicals Index Online Covers complete runs of over 6,000 journals in the arts, humanities, and the social sciences from first issue to 1995 or ceased date. limit search to Document Type: Review.
• Readers' Guide Retrospective Covers 1890 to 1982. Popular periodicals. Limit to document type: Book Review.
• 19th Century Masterfile In search box, type in name of book in quotes. Choose "exact words" search.
• American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900 Document Type: Review

Classic Print Book Review Indexes

• Book Review Index Plus Online. Gale Cengage. Identifies 5.6 million+ book reviews on 2.5 million books, reviewed 1965-present. Search filters are available for fulltext reviews and for reviews in peer-reviewed journals.
• Book Review Digest Retrospective Online. EBSCOhost. Identifies book reviews published in 1905-1982, with excerpts from the reviews. Covers adult and juvenile fiction and nonfiction.
• Book Review Index Print.[Van Pelt Library Reference Stacks: Z1035 .A1 B6] Indexes all reviews in about 215 English-language journals, including reviews of fiction, non-fiction and children's books. Monthly with quarterly and annual cumulations. Covers 1966-present.
• Magill Book Reviews Online. Provide summaries of classic literature as well as current best sellers with 500 new reviews added each year. Magill Book Reviews are unique to EBSCO products and not available as a printed collection.
• Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals, 1886-1974 Print.[Van Pelt Library Reference Stacks: Z1035 .A1 C64] Index by author name to book reviews in 459 scholarly journals in history, political science, and sociology. Short notices as well as full-length reviews included. Reviewers' names not given.
• Current book review citations. Print. [Van Pelt Library Reference Stacks: Z1035 .A1 C86] Covers non-fiction, fiction, foreign-language titles, and new editions. Citations include name of reviewer. Covers 1976-82.
• National Library Service cumulative book review index 1905-1974. Print. [Van Pelt Library Reference Stacks: Z1035 .A1 N38] Six-volume [3 alphabetically by author, 3 by title] cumulative index to reviews cited in Book Review Digest plus those published in Saturday Review [1924-1974], Library Journal [1907-1974], and Choice [1969-1974].
• Bibliographie der Rezensionen=International Bibliography of Book Reviews (IBR) . 77 vols., 1900-1943. Leipzig: Dietrich, 1901-1944. Print. [Various locations: see Franklin: Catalog] Index to reviews in 3000+ German-language serials from 1901 until 1911 and from 1911 to 1943 [except 1916-1924]. German and non-German serials. By 1943, 5000 German and 4000 other titles were indexed, including 50 newspapers. Indexes some English-language titles not included in Book Review Digest. [Van Pelt Library: AI9 .B6]
• Internationale bibliographie der Rezensionen wissenschaftlicher Literatur = International bibliography of book reviews of scholarly literature. Print. Published in four sections: A - index of periodicals consulted [4000+]; B - classified subject index [in German, with references from English and French equivalents] of book reviews; C - index of book reviews by reviewed authors; D - index of book reviews by reviewer. International; major western language journals; all subjects, including scientific ones.
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• Last Updated: Jul 30, 2024 2:43 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.upenn.edu/bookreviews

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How to Find Book Reviews

• Academic Book Reviews
• Best Starting Places
• General Sources
• Books Published Before 1990

African-American and Diaspora Studies

• International Index to Black Periodicals This link opens in a new window Select "Review" under Document Type.

Anthropology

• AnthroSource This link opens in a new window Archive of all journals, newsletters, and bulletins of the American Anthropological Association.

Comprehensive resource for art literature: articles, indexing and abstracting of journals, and art dissertations; covering fine, decorative, and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and architecture. Includes indexing of publications, and citations of book reviews. Indexing of art reproductions provides examples of styles and art movements, including works by emerging artists.

Coverage: 1929 to present. 

Asian Studies

Coverage: 1955 to present 

• JSTOR This link opens in a new window In Advanced Search, select Narrow By "Review."
• Nature Browse reviews by year: Click “Archive” in the headline banner, then click “Article category archive,” then look for “Books and Arts.”
• Science Book reviews may be searched or browsed by ticking the “Book & Web Reviews” box on the Advanced Search page.

Journal articles, book chapters, reference works, and protocols.

• Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window Select "Book Review" under Document Type.
• American Chemical Society Publications This link opens in a new window American Chemical Society's peer-reviewed research journals in chemical and related sciences.

***Individual user accounts will not be ported to the new site. Users will need to create new individual accounts on choicereviews.org. For instructions on how to do so, please see the Choice Reviews Quick-start Guide.*** Reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education.

Vendor Tutorial: Choice Reviews Quick-start Guide

• Royal Society of Chemistry Journals Do a search for book reviews in the search field.

Cinema & Media Studies

• FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals This link opens in a new window Indexes academic and popular film journals. In the Advanced Search limit Document Type to "Review" for best results. more... less... Coverage: 1972 to present.
• Année Philologique This link opens in a new window To find reviews: Search for the title of the book. In the detail record for the book there will be a list of references to book reviews at the end of the entry.
• Classical Review The Classical Review publishes informative reviews from leading scholars on new work covering the literatures and civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome.

Communication Studies

• Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) This link opens in a new window Content of CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index and other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study.

Computer Science

• ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window Association for Computing Machinery's access to journals, magazines, transactions, ACM proceedings, SIG proceedings, newsletters, and publications by affiliated organizations.

Earth and Environmental Science

• Earth Formerly known as Geotimes.
• Geology Today
• Nature Geoscience

Comprehensive, indexed bibliography with selected abstracts of the world's economic literature, produced by the American Economic Association. Includes working papers which have been licensed from the Cambridge University Press.

Coverage: 1969 to present. 

Coverage: 1929 to present. Full text begins 1996

Engineering

Coverage: 1988 to present 

English & Theatre

• Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, 1920- (ABELL) This link opens in a new window Select "Review" under Limit To. more... less... Coverage: 1920 to present.
• MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Subject indexing of journals, books, proceedings, and dissertations in the areas of literature, language and linguistics, folklore, film, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, and the historical aspects of printing and publishing. more... less... Coverage: 1926 to present.

A brief selection of resources is below.  A larger selection is on the book reviews tab of the History Resources research guide.

Coverage: 1910 to present. 

Jewish Studies

Mathematics.

• MathSciNet: Mathematical Reviews (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window Pure and applied mathematics and statistics, and applications to other fields, such as physics, computer science, and engineering. Most entries contain an author's abstract or critical review. more... less... Coverage: 1940 to present.
• MathSciNet: Mathematical Reviews (American Mathematical Society) This link opens in a new window Pure and applied mathematics and statistics, and applications to other fields, such as physics, computer science, and engineering. Most entries contain an author's abstract or critical review. more... less... Coverage: 1940 to present.
• Music Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window A database of articles published in music and related periodicals containing over 160,000 citations to more than 350 journals. Under Advanced Search, limit "Document Type" to "Review" for best results.
• Philosopher's Index This link opens in a new window Click Advanced Search, then select "Book Review" under Publication Type. more... less... Coverage: 1940 to present.

You can set up your own personal profile which will enable you to save searches and create alerts for new issues.

Political Science

• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA) This link opens in a new window In Advanced Search, choose "Book Review" from Document type. more... less... Coverage: 1975 to present.
• PsycINFO This link opens in a new window In Advanced Search, choose "Review-book" from Record type. more... less... Coverage: 1800s to present.

To obtain or reset a VUNetID, submit a request via the link Ask a Librarian with your full name, school name and the year of graduation. 

Coverage: 19th century to present

• Religion and Philosophy Collection This link opens in a new window Select "Book Review" under Document Type
• Review of Biblical Literature
• Reviews in Religion and Theology Journal dedicated to the review of theological scholarship
• Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window In Advanced Search, choose "Book Review" from Document type. more... less... Coverage: 1953 to present.
• << Previous: Books Published Before 1990
• Last Updated: Jun 21, 2024 10:12 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/bookreviews

Book Reviews: A Finding Guide: Print Resources

• Introduction
• Online Resources

Print Resources

• Resources by Date
• Need Help? Ask A Librarian
• American Reference Books Annual Call Number: Uris Library Stacks Periodicals Z 1035.1 .A55 Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Covers 1970 to 2019 in print volumes . Reviews of reference titles only.
• Bibliographie der Rezensionen Call Number: Library Annex Oversize AI 9 .B583 + Leipzig, Germany: F. Dietrich Covers 1900 to 1943. Like its successor, IBR , there is extensive coverage of book reviews in the European journal literature. Numerous title changes as follows: Bibliographie der Deutschen Rezensionen [1900-1911], Bibliographie der Rezensionen [1911-1914], Bibliographie der Rezensionen und Referate [1915-1921], and Bibliographie der Rezensionen [1921-1942/1943]. For coverage from 1971 to 2011, see the entry for IBR (Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur) below.
• Book Review Digest [BRD] Call Number: Library Annex Z 1219 .B72 + New York: H. W. Wilson. Covers 1905 to 1983 . A digest of book reviews appearing in approximately 80 periodicals, reviewing some 4,000 books annually. Entries are arranged alphabetically by author and include price, publisher and other bibliographic information. This is followed by a descriptive note or synopsis of the book, then citations to the reviews with excerpts from as many reviews as are necessary to reflect the evaluations of the articles. Each citation includes the name of the periodical, page and date of review as well as the number of words in the review. Published monthly and cumulated annually into a bound volume containing a subject and title index at the back. Every fifth year a cumulated subject and title index was published. BRD is no longer available online. For online searching, use Academic Search Premier's Advanced Search and choose Book Reviews under Document Type.
• Book Review Index Call Number: Library Annex Z 1219 .B721 + Detroit: Gale. Covers 1965 to 2009 . Five-year cumulated indexes ease searching. Indexes reviews of books and periodicals appearing in over 500 scholarly, popular, and professional periodicals. Titles reviewed include children's, young adult, and reference books. Each record includes: author and title of the work being reviewed, journal title abbreviation, date of review, page number, and an indication of the length of the review. Abbreviations and full journal titles are listed in the front of each volume.
• Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals Call Number: Olin Library Reference + AI 3 .I3671 Ann Arbor: Pierian Press. 4 volumes. Covers 1964-1974 . 4 volumes. Volume 1 covers 1964 to 1970; volume 2, 1971; volume 3, 1972; volume 4, 1973 to March 1974. Supplements Book Review Digest and Book Review Index , complements Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities , and forms the predecessor to review coverage in Social Sciences Index and Current Book Review Citations.
• Book Reviews in Historical Periodicals Call Number: Uris Library Stacks Z 6205 .I38 Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. 6 annual volumes. Covers 1972 to 1977 . A short-lived effort by John W. Brewster and Joseph A. McLeod at North Texas State University. Because it indexes reviews of books about non-North American history (and therefore supplements what is available in America: History & Life ), I include it here. An example of the obscure book review sources that lurk in the Uris stacks. For a guide to the obscure, see the Postscript.
• Combined Retrospective Index to Scholarly Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals Call Number: Olin Library Reference AI 3 .C73 + Arlington, VA: Carrollton Press, 1979. 15 volumes. Covers 1886 to 1974 . Indexes "one million book reviews which appeared in the complete backfiles of 459 scholarly journals in History, Political Science, and Sociology." [Introduction]
• Current Book Review Citations Call Number: Library Annex Z 1219 .C98 + Covers 1976 to 1982 . Compiles citations to the reviews that appeared in all the Wilson indexes ( Reader's Guide, General Science Index, Humanities Index, Social Sciences Index ). Over one thousand journals are covered.
• French Periodical Index Call Number: Library Annex AI 7 .F87 Westwood, MA: F. W. Faxon. Annual cumulations. Covers 1973 to 1995 . Mainly in French, this is a general periodical index intended for college students in advanced French language classes. Began indexing 7 titles in 1973; 63 titles indexed in 1995. Book reviews are under the subject heading "Livre."
• Index to Australian Book Reviews Call Number: Uris Library Stacks Oversize Z 4011 .I38 + Adelaide: Library Board of South Australia. Covers 1965 to 1970.
• Index to Book Reviews in England Call Number: Olin Library Reference AI 3 .F73 Compiled by Antonia Forster. Vol. 1, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990; vol. 2, London: British Library, 1996. Covers 1749 to 1800 . Volume 1 covers 1749 to 1774; volume 2 covers 1775 to 1800. "[R]eviewing, in anything approaching the modern sense of the term, began in the eighteenth century, with the Monthly Review [available in the Early English Newspapers microform set: Film 5053, reels 1215-1247] in 1749, and there is much to be learned about its place in and impact on eighteenth-century literature" (Preface to volume 1). Books reviewed are likely to be found in ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online).
• Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities Call Number: Olin Library Reference AI 3 .I367 Williamston, MI: P. Thomson. Covers 1960 to 1990 . Annual index. Originally indexed "several hundred periodicals" in English. Foreign-language titles added in 1970. ( Guide to Reference Books , 11th ed., AA372).
• Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur = International bibliography of book reviews of scholarly literature on the humanities and social sciences. [aka IBR] Call Number: Library Annex Oversize AI 9 .I612 Osnabrück, Germany: F. Dietrich. Covers 1971 to 2011 . Extensive coverage of book reviews in the European journal literature. Appears annually in two half-year parts. Each part contains five sections--A: Autoren/Authors index, B: Rezensenten/Reviewers index, C: Titel/Titles index, D: Sachgebiets/Subjects index, E: Zeitschriften/Periodicals index.
• The Literary [and Historical] Index to American Literary Magazines Call Number: Olin Reference Z 1225 .W38x [year] Compiled by Daniel A. Wells. 3 volumes by various publishers, 1980, 1996, 2004. Covers 1800 to 1900 in three volumes. See note below . An index to writing about literary and historical Americans from the period. Book reviews are labeled with the abbreviation "rev." (Note: The original volume covering 1815-1865 appears to have indexed only two titles not included in the last two volumes-- Harbinger , a weekly from Brook Farm, and New Mirror , a brief successor to New York Mirror ; otherwise this volume is superseded by the latter two.
• A Reference Guide for English Studies Call Number: Olin Library Reference Z 2011 .M32 1990 + See section Z-66, Aids for Locating Contemporary Reviews, page 551 . Of particular value as a guide for locating eighteenth-century through early nineteenth-century sources of literary reviews.
• Reference Reviews Europe Annual Call Number: Uris Library Stacks Z 1002 .R32 Covers 1995 to 2013/2014 . Ceased with 2013/2014 both in print format and online.
• Referencias críticas autores chilenos Call Number: Uris Library Stacks Z 1701 .R33 Santiago de Chile: Biblioteca Nacional, 1968-1994[?]. We own 1968-1985, 1987-1988 . A book review index in Spanish published by the National Library of Chile.
• Science Fiction Book Review Index Call Number: Olin Library Reference Z 5917 .S36 H17 and Z 5917 .S36 H171 Detroit: Gale, 1975, 1981. Covers 1923-1973 and 1974-1979 in two volumes.
• << Previous: Online Resources
• Next: Resources by Date >>
• Last Updated: Aug 21, 2024 3:08 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/bookreviews

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Blog – Posted on Thursday, Nov 11

The only book review templates you'll ever need.

Whether you’re trying to become a book reviewer , writing a book report for school, or analyzing a book, it’s nice to follow a book review template to make sure that your thoughts are clearly presented. 

A quality template provides guidance to keep your mind sharp and your thoughts organized so that you can write the best book review possible. On Reedsy Discovery , we read and share a lot of book reviews, which helps us develop quite a clear idea what makes up a good one. With that in mind, we’ve put together some trustworthy book review templates that you can download, along with a quick run-through of all the parts that make up an outstanding review — all in this post! 

Pro-tip : But wait! How are you sure if you should become a book reviewer in the first place? If you're on the fence, or curious about your match with a book reviewing career, take our quick quiz:

Should you become a book reviewer?

Find out the answer. Takes 30 seconds!

Book review templates for every type of review

With the rapid growth of the book community on Instagram, Youtube, and even TikTok, the world of book commentary has evolved far beyond your classic review. There are now many ways you can structure a book review. Some popular formats include:

• Book reports — often done for school assignments; 
• Commentary articles — think in-depth reviews in magazines and newspapers; 
• Book blog reviews — short personal essays about the book; and
• Instagram reviews — one or two-paragraph reviews captioned under a nice photo. 

But while the text in all these review styles can be organized in different ways, there are certain boxes that all good book reviews tick. So, instead of giving you various templates to use for different occasions, we’ve condensed it down to just two book review templates (one for fiction and one for nonfiction) that can guide your thoughts and help you nail just about any review. 

⭐ Download our free fiction book review template  

⭐ Download our free nonfiction book review template  

All you need to do is answer the questions in the template regarding the book you’re reading and you’ve got the content of your review covered. Once that’s done, you can easily put this content into its appropriate format. 

Now, if you’re curious about what constitutes a good book review template, we’ll explain it in the following section! 

Elements of a book review template

Say you want to build your own book review template, or you want to customize our templates — here are the elements you’ll want to consider. 

We’ve divided our breakdown of the elements into two categories: the essentials and the fun additions that’ll add some color to your book reviews.

What are the three main parts of a book review?

We covered this in detail (with the help of some stellar examples) in our post on how to write a book review , but basically, these are the three crucial elements you should know: 

The summary covers the premise of the book and its main theme, so readers are able to understand what you’re referring to in the rest of your review. This means that, if a person hasn’t read the book, they can go through the summary to get a quick idea of what it’s about. (As such, there should be no spoilers!) 

The analysis is where, if it’s a fiction book, you talk more about the book, its plot, theme, and characters. If it’s nonfiction, you have to consider whether the book effectively achieves what it set out to do. 

The recommendation is where your personal opinion comes in the strongest, and you give a verdict as to who you think might enjoy this book. 

You can choose to be brief or detailed, depending on the kind of review you’re writing, but you should always aim to cover these three points. If you’re needing some inspiration, check out these 17 book review examples as seen in magazines, blogs, and review communities like Reedsy Discovery for a little variation. 

Which review community should you join?

Find out which review community is best for your style. Takes 30 seconds!

Which additional details can you include?

Once you’ve nailed down the basics, you can jazz things up a little and add some personal flavor to your book review by considering some of these elements:

• A star-rating (the default is five stars but you can create your own scales); 
• A bullet-point pros and cons list; 
• Your favorite quotation from the book; 
• Commentary on the format you read (i.e., ebook, print, or audiobook);
• Fun facts about the book or author; 
• Other titles you think are similar.

This is where you can really be creative and tailor your review to suit your purpose and audience. A formal review written for a magazine, for instance, will likely benefit from contextual information about the author and the book, along with some comment on how that might have affected the reading (or even writing) process.

Meanwhile, if you’re reviewing a book on social media, you might find bullet points more effective at capturing the fleeting attention of Internet users. You can also make videos, take creative pictures, or even add your own illustrations for more personal touches. The floor is yours at this point, so go ahead and take the spotlight! 

That said, we hope that our templates can provide you with a strong foundation for even your most adventurous reviews. And if you’re interested in writing editorial reviews for up-and-coming indie titles, register as a reviewer on Reedsy Discovery !

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The Pleasures That Lurk in the Back of the Book

The index has a fascinating history and holds a special place for one obsessive who sees it as a sort of conceptual map.

It’s hard to believe, but the humble index—expediter of searches, organizer of concepts— prompted outcries as it became more widespread: If one has an index, why would anyone read a book? Alarms “were being sounded,” Dennis Duncan writes in his lively Index, A History of the , “that indexes were taking the place of books.” Jonathan Swift worried that people would “pretend to understand a Book, by scouting thro’ the Index, as if a Traveller should go about to describe a Palace, when he has seen nothing but the Privy.”

I confess to spending an undue amount of time in the Palace Privy—and loving it. Done well, an index, that list in the back of a book containing its concepts and references, is either hugely helpful, sending you directly to the mentions of, say, Theodore Roosevelt’s dog Pete attacking the French ambassador, when you don’t want to read the whole biography. Or it is eclectic and opinionated, clever and winking. It is a side door into the book: less formal, more personal than the route through copyright and title pages, tables of contents and dedications. It enables a kind of choose-your-own-adventure for the literary. You race right to the spots you want, and take your own tour through the author’s words. Indexes offer the reader multiple ways in and through the text, freeing them from the confines of an ineluctable narrative.

If you’re a reader and you don’t like indexes, you may have run across only poor ones. The pleasure I take in a book is determined not just by its main pages, the words carefully written by the author, but also by its adjunct elements, its dressing: the index, but also the dust jacket, the author bio, the dedication and acknowledgments, the typeface note.

I can track my own biography through these paratexts. In college, I coveted and collected well-turned footnotes, such as “You have a donkey, so have I …” from J. L. Austin’s essay “A Plea for Excuses” and Nicholson Baker’s “Perforation! Shout it out!” in his The Mezzanine . Professionally, my fascination with the guide words at the top of each page of a dictionary, indicating its alphabetical range of words, led me to become a reader of dictionaries and, subsequently, hired by one. I was tasked with amending the previous version of the dictionary to reflect changing word usage, including adding new meanings and new entries. My days were punctuated by each fresh new box of words—3x5 cards with examples of their use in writing. The labels on the boxes were themselves poetry, and so I defined “downhearted to dragon lady,” “mind-boggling to miniature schnauzer,” “skimble-skamble to skit.” Years later, as a fact-checker at The New Yorker , pre–Google search, we relied on the gloriously exhaustive volumes of the annual New York Times Index (lauded in The New York Times Book Review as “unique … indispensable … amazingly complete”) to track down sundry facts.

Read: The logic of the filing cabinet is everywhere

The moment I felt I had arrived as a writer was after finding my father’s name in the Times Index (“1975, Horowitz, Jay, O 15, 46:2”) and then discovering my own—“Horowitz, Alexandra, 10, 101”—in another writer’s book. I feel that I’ve launched on a writing project only when I’ve begun compiling indexlike documents on subject topics—“ on the inside of your own eye ,” “ on street-crossing instructions ,” “ on running after one’s hat ”—which themselves index the research I have read relating to the topic. After the manuscript is completed comes a thrilling day when I am sent my own book’s index—the person who compiles it is the first reader who isn’t invested in the book. The topics she pulls out, how she cuts the conceptual lines, are more than a concordance of words; they are her interpretation of the landscape of ideas in the book. The index reifies it as a book, at the same time that the choice to foreground one topic or another might surprise even the author.

And I was reminded, reading Duncan’s paean to them, just how whimsical indexes can be. By far the highlight of Lewis Carroll’s widely (and perhaps rightly) overlooked Sylvie and Bruno is the index (“Bread-sauce. What appropriate for? 58” and “Crocodiles, logic of; 230” are favorites). Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography neatly sums itself up, indexly: “doom, overall feeling of, ix-211.”

Unsurprisingly, in reading Duncan’s book, I began with the index. Such a book might have a quite self-conscious one, you’d think. Although the indexer, Paula Clarke Bain, is credited within the main body of the text (and self-indexed in the index), her name, like most who do her job, is not on the dust jacket with the author’s. But Bain’s playful, completely over-the-top index demonstrates how authorial the indexer’s presence is, leading the reader on wild-goose chases (“wild goose chase see chase, wild goose”; “goose chase, wild see wild-goose chase”), pointing out elements of the text that a reader might have missed, and commenting on Duncan’s description of her own task as “drudgery.” (Bain replies, “How dare you.”)

Samuel Johnson used similar language— harmless drudge —to describe the lexicographer who compiles a dictionary. As Duncan observes, indexes have a long history of being anything but “harmless,” which is what gives them the possibility of such personality. Indexes have been wielded to display wit, to skewer an author (“his egregious dulness”; “his Pedantry”; “his familiar acquaintance with Books that he never saw”), and as a site of political battling (as when a Whig indexed a Tory History of England ). Tasked with writing an introduction to an 18th-century sentimental novel, Henry Morley concocted an “Index to Tears,” enumerating all the instances of sobbing, flowing tears, and weeping in the emotionally overwrought tale. “A highly satisfying take-down,” Duncan writes. Duncan’s indexer comments on this episode via a winding set of cross-references (“blubbing see crying”; “crying see howling”; etc.) ending, finally, at a central title of the index.

In giving the index its biography, Duncan rightly celebrates the paratexts—the peripheral ephemera—that transmogrify an author’s work from a Microsoft Word doc into a pleasing object on the shelf of your local bookshop. The history of indexes, as Duncan tells it, is also a history of alphabetical order, chaptering, and the advent of page numbers. It is also, essentially, a history of the codex, the book as we know it, which can be riffled and browsed, its pages accessed at whim, unlike the unwieldy scroll. If those topics don’t get your heart racing, perhaps this isn’t the book for you—but that would be a shame. Duncan’s enthusiasms are contagious, such as his effusion over the “characterful” gothic capital J —actually meant to stand for 1—the first printed page number, in the margins of a 15th-century printed sermon: “I love this J all the more for its blurriness. I would rather it were this way.”

In an age when one can easily search for every instance of a word in a book, and we lack the perseverance to make it through an entire Twitter thread, the index is no longer the main suspect in our inability to read properly, as Swift and others once worried. But in one way, the index fear has been realized, insofar as some books are themselves indexes. As early as 1532, Duncan tells us, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Dutch philosopher, wrote an index as a book; more recently, index fans will know of the short-story writer J. G. Ballard’s “The Index,” in which the fantastical narrative comes together through reading the alphabetical entries (ending, obliquely, when the indexer, Zielinski, “disappears, 761”).

And indexes have leapt off the page. The artist Helen Mirra has made a practice of creating her own indexes to books, including those of John Dewey and W. G. Sebald. For several years the University of Chicago hosted an exhibit of portions of her indexes, writ large, with entries painted on walls in buildings across campus. Encountering them, one could not help reading them as commenting on the scene, like museum art labels—so that the real world became the “art.” At the bottom of a severe set of stairs, one painted entry warned “blunders, 18; irreparable, so easy to commit, 114.” Another simply says, “Pauses, odd, 97.” Like any good index, all of these labels open up new ways of seeing and categorizing the world.

Indeed, indexes have not brought about the end of reading, but they did presage the dawn of the ubiquitous search engine. Duncan references Google maybe too many times (in 14 separate ways, per the index), but no wonder: It is today’s “wormhole” into not just one text but conceivably all texts. Far from displacing indexes, though, it has highlighted their unique ability to make previously unforeseen connections between ideas. They catalog our own desire to label and comment, to moor our ideas to the world.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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• Library of Congress
• Research Guides
• Main Reading Room

Finding Book Reviews Online

Introduction.

• Sources for General Book Reviews

General Inquiries : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

Chat with a librarian , Monday through Friday, 12-4pm Eastern Time (except Federal Holidays).

Author: Elizabeth Brown, Reference Librarian, Researcher & Reference Services Division

Created: January 31, 2020

Last Updated: May 13, 2020

Most researchers find book reviews using online tools.. Some resources include full-text reviews, while others provide citations that lead to publications that contain the reviews. The lists below link to some free resources and to databases selected from those available to researchers in Library of Congress reading rooms. The databases generally reference reviews by professional reviewers or subject experts; the free sources are by a mix of professionals and amateur reviewers. For more resources, use the Library of Congress E-Resources Online Catalog to locate databases that concentrate on specific subject areas, including art, business, education, music, religion, science, and many others.

Before you start your search you should know the title and author; the date of publication will sometimes also be required. Some databases offer a search option to limit search results to book reviews. Where not present, adding a keyword search that includes the phrase "book review" should help. Reviews of popular books are typically published close to their publication dates; find them via book-related websites and indexes that cover general interest periodicals. Reviews of scholarly books may take months to appear in scholarly journals.

This guide concentrates on sources for general book reviews available at the Library of Congress. Other libraries provide access to many of the same resources.

• Next: Sources for General Book Reviews >>
• Last Updated: May 31, 2024 8:50 AM
• URL: https://guides.loc.gov/finding-book-reviews

Book Review Index

Welcome to The Millions Book Review Index! Here you’ll find a listing of all the reviews ever penned for The Millions by both our regular contributors and our many, many guests. The reviews range from our longest considerations, to our briefest squibs, to appreciations and ruminations. We hope you’ll enjoy this new way to explore The Millions. As always, thanks for your support.

Achebe, Chinua

• Things Fall Apart

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi

• Half of a Yellow Sun

Adler, Renata

• Reckless Disregard

Aksynov, Vassily

• Generations of Winter

Allen, Woody

• Getting Even
• Side Effects
• Without Feathers , 2

Alvarez, A.

• The Biggest Game in Town

Ames, Jonathan

• The Alcoholic

Amis, Kingsley

• Everyday Drinking
• Lucky Jim , 2

Amis, Martin

• London Fields , 2
• The Rachel Papers

Anderson, Jon Lee

Anderson, m.t..

• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party , 2 , 3

Angell, Roger

Atkinson, rick.

• An Army at Dawn
• Day of Battle
• In the Company of Soldiers

Atwood, Margaret

• The Handmaid’s Tale

Ball, Jesse

• Samedi the Deafness
• The Way Through Doors

Barker, Pat

• The Regeneration Trilogy

Bataille, Marion

Bayard, pierre.

• How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read

Beatty, Paul

• The White-Boy Shuffle

Bellow, Saul

• Humboldt’s Gift
• Seize the Day

Berrigan, Ted

• The Sonnets

Berryman, John

• The Dream Songs

Binelli, Mark

• Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die

Birmajer, Marcelo

• Three Musketeers

Bock, Charles

• Beautiful Children

Bolaño, Roberto

• Last Evenings on Earth
• Nazi Literature in the Americas
• The Savage Detectives
• The Skating Rink , 2

Bouillier, Gregiore

• The Mystery Guest

Bourdain, Anthony

• The Nasty Bits

Bowles, Paul

• The Sheltering Sky
• Too Far From Home

Boyd, William

• Any Human Heart
• A Good Man in Africa
• An Ice-Cream War
• Stars and Bars

Boyle, T.C.

• Water Music

Boynton, William

• The New, New Journalism

Brautigan, Richard

• Sombrero Fallout

Brown, Chester

• I Never Liked You

Brooks, Bruce

• The Moves Make the Man

Burton, Robert

• The Anatomy of Melancholy

Butler, Samuel

• The Way of All Flesh

Bryson, Bill

• Neither Here Nor There
• A Walk in the Woods

Buckler, Julie A.

• Mapping St. Petersburg

Bulgakov, Mikhail

• The Master and Margarita

Burdett, John

Byron, robert.

• The Road to Oxiana

Calvino, Italo

• The Baron in the Trees
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
• The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount

Camus, Albert

• American Journals

Capote, Truman

• In Cold Blood , 2

Carey, Peter

• His Illegal Self

Caro, Robert

• The Power Broker

Carrere, Emmanuel

• The Class Trip & The Mustache

Carson, Anne

• The Autobiography of Red

Carter, Angela

• The Bloody Chamber

Cather, Willa

• Death Comes for the Archbishop

Cervantes, Miguel

• Don Quixote , 2

Chabon, Michael

• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union , 2

Chamoiseau, Patrick

Chandra, vikram.

• Sacred Games

Chang, Eileen

• Love in a Fallen City

Chekhov, Anton

• Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories

Child, Julia

• My Life in France

Christensen, Kate

• The Epicure’s Lament , 2

Clark, Martin

• Plain Heathen Mischief

Clarke, Susanna

• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell

Codrescu, Andrei

• The Posthuman Dada Guide

Coen, Ethan

• Gates of Eden

Coetzee, J.M.

• Diary of a Bad Year
• Waiting for the Barbarians

Cohen, Leonard

• The Favorite Game

Cole, Trevor

• Norman Bray In The Performance Of His Life

Connelly, Cyril

• The Unquiet Grave

Conover, Ted

Coyne, kelly.

• The Urban Homestead

Crane, Elizabeth

• All This Heavenly Glory

Crile, George

• Charlie Wilson’s War

Crowley, John

• Aegypt Cycle

Currie, Jr., Ron

• Everything Matters!

Curtis, Rebecca

• Twenty Grand

Dahl, Roald

• Collected Stories

Dalton, Quinn

• Bulletproof Girl

D’Ambrosio, Charles

• The Dead Fish Museum

Danielewski, Mark Z.

• House of Leaves

Davies, Peter Ho

• The Welsh Girl

Davis, Joshua

Davis, kathryn.

• The Thin Place

Davis, Lisa Selin

Davis, lydia.

• Varieties of Disturbance

Dawkins, Richard

• The God Delusion

Dexter, Pete

• Brotherly Love
• Paper Trails
• Paris Trout

Diaz, Junot

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , 2 , 3

Dillard, Annie

• The Maytrees

Dobbs, Michael

• Never Surrender

Doctorow, E.L.

• Creationists

Donleavy, J.P

• A Fairy Tale of New York
• The Ginger Man

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

• The Brothers Karamazov
• Crime and Punshiment , 2
• Notes from Underground

Dovey, Ceridwen

Dovlatov, sergei.

• Ours: A Russian Family Album

Dowlatabadi, Mahmoud

• Missing Soluch
• The End of Vandalism

Dumas, Alexandre

• The Count of Monte Cristo , 2

Dundy, Elaine

• The Dud Avocado

Durrell, Gerald

• Birds, Beasts, and Relatives
• My Family and Other Animals

Durrell, Lawrence

Edmonds, david and eidinow, john.

• Wittgenstein’s Poker

Egan, Jennifer

Eggers, dave.

• What is the What

Eisenberg, Deborah

• Twilight of the Superheroes
• Under the 82nd Airborne

Eliot, George

• Middlemarch

Endo, Shusako

Englund, steven.

• Napoleon: A Political Life

Erard, Michael

• Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean

Evenson, Brian

• The Open Curtain

Eugenides, Jeffrey

• Middlesex , 2
• Virgin Suicides

Exley, Frederick

• A Fan’s Notes

Fanelli, Sara

• Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am

Feinstein, John

• The Last Amateurs

Fielding, Henry

Finger, anne.

• Call Me Ahab

Fitch, Janet

• Paint is Black
• White Oleander

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

• Jazz Age Stories

Flaubert, Gustave

• Flaubert in Egypt

Flynn, Nick

• Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Foer, Jonathan Safran

• Eating Animals
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Ford, Ford Madox

• The Good Soldier

Ford, Richard

• Independence Day
• The Lay of the Land

Fowles, John

• The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Frank, Thomas

• One Market Under God

Frankfurt, Harry G.

• On Bullshit

Franzen, Jonathan

• The Corrections , 2 , 3

Freeman, Judith

• The Long Embrace

Freudenberger, Nell

• The Dissident

Fry, Stephen

• The Hippopotamus

Gaddis, William

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Gallant, Mavis

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Gardner, John

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Gardner, Leonard

Garrels, anne.

• Naked in Baghdad

Gass, William H.

• A Temple of Texts
• Sites of Impact

Gellman, Barton

Gelman, andrew.

• Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

German, Mike

• Thinking Like a Terrorist

Gibson, William

• Neuromancer

Gilbert, Elizabeth

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Gober, Robert

• Heat Waves in a Swamp

Goldman, Francisco

• The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed The Bishop?

Gorey, Edward

• The Curious Sofa

Grass, Gunter

• The Tin Drum

Graysmith, Robert

• Zodiac Unmasked

Greene, Graham

• The Captain and the Enemy
• The Comedians
• The Heart of the Matter
• The Lawless Roads
• The Power and the Glory

Gresser, Edward

• Freedom From Want

Guralnick, Peter

• Last Train to Memphis

Gustafsson, Lars

• The Death of a Beekeeper
• DeNiro’s Game

Handke, Peter

• A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

Hardy, Thomas

• Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Harvey, David

• The Limits of Capital

Harvey, Kenneth J.

Harvey, miles.

• The Island of Lost Maps

Hasak-Lowy, Todd

Hazzard, shirley.

• The Great Fire

Hecht, Jennifer Michael

• Doubt: A History

Hecht, Julie

• The Unprofessionals

Heller, Joseph

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Helprin, Mark

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Heller, Zoe

• What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal

Hemingway, Ernest

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• The Sun Also Rises

Hemon, Aleksandar

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Hensher, Philip

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Herzog, Maurice

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Heuler, Karen

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Hickey, Dave

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Hollinghurst, Alan

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Hornby, Nick

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Houellebecq, Michel

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Hugo, Victor

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Hughes, Richard

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Hundertwasser

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Huneven, Michelle

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Hutton, Susan

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Irving, John

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Ishiguru, Kazuo

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Iweala, Uzodinma

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Jacobson, Howard

• Kalooki Nights

James, Clive

• Cultural Amnesia

James, Henry

• The Ambassadors

Jergovic, Milijenko

• Sarajevo Marlboro

Johnson, B.S.

• The Unfortunates

Johnson, Denis

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Jones, Edward P.

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Jones, Judith

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Jonke, Gert

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Joyce, Graham

• The Tooth Fairy

Jungersen, Christian

• The Exception

Kaplan, Robert D.

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Kapuscinski, Ryszard

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Keegan, John

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Kelly, Michael

• Martyrs’ Day

Kennedy, A.L.

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• The Soul of a New Machine

Kimmelman, Michael

• Portraits, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere

King, Stephen

• Everything’s Eventual

Kipling, Rudyard

Klam, julie.

• Please Excuse My Daughter
• Elvis Is Titanic: Classroom Tales From The Other Iraq

Kneale, Matthew

• The English Passengers
• When We Were Romans

Koestler, Arthur

• Darkness at Noon

Lachenmeyer, Nathaniel

• 13: The Story of the World’s Most Popular Superstition

Lakhnavi, Ghalib

• The Adventures of Amir Hamza

Langewiesche, William

• The Atomic Bazaar
• The Outlaw Sea

Lapcharoensap, Rattawut

• Sightseeing

Larsen, Erik

• Devil in the White City

Lasdun, James

• The Horned Man

Laurie, Hugh

• The Gun Seller

LaValle, Victor

• Big Machine

Lawrence, T.E.

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Laye, Camara

• The Radiance of the King

Lesi, Michael

• Wisconsin Death Trip

Leonard, Elmore

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• The Golden Notebook

Lethem, Jonathan

• Fortress of Solitude , 2 , 3 , 4
• Motherless Brooklyn
• The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye
• You Don’t Love Me Yet

Levy, Andrea

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• Liar’s Poker , 2

Link, Kelly

• Pretty Monsters
• Stranger Things Happen

Lipsky, David

• Absolutely American

Littell, Jonathan

• The Kindly Ones

Livesy, Margot

• The House on Fortune Street

Lohr, Robert

• The Chess Machine

Lopate, Philip

• Two Marriages
• Hot Chicks with Douchebags

Loyd, Anthony

• My War Gone By, I Miss it So

Mandel, Emily St. John

• Last Night in Montreal

Manguel, Alberto

• A History of Reading

Mano, D. Keith

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• The Mirror in the Well

Martel, William C.

• Victory in War

Martin, Clancy

• How to Sell

Martinez, Guillermo

• The Book of Murder

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• Of Human Bondage

Maxwell, William

• So Long, See You Tomorrow

Mazzucchelli, David

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McCann, Colum

• Let the Great World Spin

McCarthy, Cormac

• No Country for Old Men
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McCarthy, Tom

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• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

McCullers, Carson

• The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

McEwan, Ian

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McPhee, John

• Annals of the Former World
• The Founding Fish
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Meek, James

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• The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
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Mollod, Phineas and Tesauro, Jason

• The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice

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• Other Electricities

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Morris, Roger

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Waller, David

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Walton, Izaak

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Weiner, Tim

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Welsh, Irvine

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Whitehead, Colson

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Williams, C.K.

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By Margalit Fox

• Published Feb. 15, 2022 Updated Feb. 17, 2022

INDEX, A HISTORY OF THE A Bookish Adventure From Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age By Dennis Duncan

Over the last quarter-century, the book as physical organism has been increasingly anatomized, and there has been no better medium for displaying anatomists’ findings than the book itself. As they illuminate long-overlooked corners of bibliography, volumes like Anthony Grafton’s “The Footnote” and H. J. Jackson’s “Marginalia” have charted the contrapuntal dance among writer, publisher, reader and material object.

Consider, for example, the 2019 anthology “Book Parts,” edited by Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth. Its table of contents includes, satisfyingly, “Tables of Contents,” along with “Dust Jackets,” “Frontispieces” and “Indexes” — a chapter by Duncan himself. Now, Duncan, a lecturer in English at University College London, has expanded that chapter into the erudite, eminently readable and wittily titled “Index, A History of the.” Fittingly, the book comes equipped with not one but two official indexes — one stellar, the other unabashedly less so — as well as a third and perhaps even a fourth. (More on Indexes: Duncan’s multiplicity of, below.)

An index, Duncan explains, is simply a map: a set of signposts pointing to — indicating — where to find what in the text’s vast terrain. This map has three constituent parts: rubrics (generally subjects or personal names); locaters (typically page numbers, at least before the e-reader era); and an internal ordering principle (usually alphabetical).

From its inception, the index has provided a window onto the history of the book, for it took the advent of a particular type of book — the codex, a sheaf of pages fastened along one edge — to make an index a practical possibility. The progenitor of the modern bound book, the codex gradually supplanted the scroll, a medium inimical to the indexer’s art. (An index in which every entry runs along the lines of “Socrates, death of: Take down 11th scroll from set of 12, unroll 37 inches and run a clean finger — perchance an index finger — 21 lines down the right-hand edge” will in short order outbulk the text itself.)

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