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Book Reviews


Books are reviewed in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly (or "peer reviewed") journals. Ordinarily a book will be reviewed within a year after it is published, although it may take longer for scholarly reviews to appear. To find a book review, you need to know the book's author, title, and date of publication. Here are several sources for finding book reviews, with dates they cover:

Current Sources

Academic Search 1984 to the present
Can limit to peer reviewed sources only.
Book Review Index, 1965 to the present (Index Table 2)
LexisNexis Academic 1980s and 1990s to present
Coverage is different for every publication included
OmniFile Full Text Mega 1984 to the present
Can limit to peer reviewed sources only

Sources for Earlier Publications

Book Review Digest, 1905-1997, Table 2 (abstr Z 1219 .C95)
Gives full bibliographic information about the book, a summary of the book, excerpts from some of the reviews, and references to full reviews in magazines, journals, and newspapers.
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals: 1886-1974 (abstr Z 1035 .A1 C65)
Humanities Index, 1974-2002, Table 2 (abstr AI 3 .R492)
A section at the back of each volume lists book reviews, which are from scholarly sources only.
Nineteenth Century Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, 1890-1899, with supplementary indexing, 1900-1922, Table 1 (abstr AI 3 .R496)
Reviews are listed by book author's name, followed by book title
Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 1802-1906 Table 1 (abstr AI 3 .P7)
Reviews are listed by book author's name, followed by book title
Social Sciences Index, 1974-2002 Table 2 (abstr AI 3 .493)
A section at the back of each volume lists book reviews, which are from scholarly sources only.