How to Read
a Book
By Jacqueline Dirks
Once you have made it to the Junior Seminar, you obviously know how to read a book. What follows, then, are instructions on how to do this basic task more efficiently, with an eye toward preparing you for the large amount of reading and note-taking you will probably do for your thesis.

With book in hand, look at the full title. Even though authors don't always wind up with the title they want, when they do they work hard to come up with a meaningful one that tells the reader something about the content. Pay attention to the name of the author--perhaps you have already read something he or she has written, and/or you may encounter this person's work again as you develop your research topic. Is the author an expert in his or her field?

If you have the dust jacket, read the promotional blurbs on the back. Publishers often seek out other experts in the same field to promote books, so you may find a new source for your research here. The blurbs, along with the people listed in the acknowledgments, often offer information about who the author's friends and major influences are.

Open the book to the verso of the title page. Who published the book? You can learn something about the book's intended audience here, for example, is the publisher a university press like Chicago or a big commercial publishing house like Knopf? In what year was the book published? Historians write about the past, but they do so from the present, sometimes to learn more about the historical origins of a contemporary problem. Readers always need to situate authors in the period in which they wrote. If material from the book has been previously published elsewhere, this page will contain the copyright permissions and titles of those works. Always check this--perhaps you have already read some of this material. Your final stop on this page should be to check out the Library of Congress subject headings. These will give you good information about the different kinds of information in the book. You can use these subject headings when searching for other books on the similar subjects.

ALWAYS read (or at least skim) the opening pages of a book, including the acknowledgments, preface, table of contents, and especially the introduction. The acknowledgments will list the author's training and debts to other thinkers.

In a good introduction, the author will give a clear statement of the problem to be considered, and situate his or her argument within the relevant debates in the field. If you read the introduction and cannot tell what the book's thesis is, read it again. If you are still unsure about the major points, it may not be your fault, but the fault of the author.

Now is the time to make your first notes on the book. Write down all the publication information (author, title, place and date of publication) in case you need to cite the book. What is the author's main thesis? Why did he or she write the book? For works of history, you should note whether (and why) the author has defined a period or query to cover particular years. Historians are interested in charting change over time--what changes is this author interested in? Even if you are not quite sure of the answers to these questions (and again, this may be the author's fault) you should still jot down provisional answers to these queries to keep in mind as you read the rest of the book.

While this approach will seem tedious at first, it will save you much time in the long run. There is little point to reading many pages of an author's evidence and argument if you have no idea what the author is trying to demonstrate. But if you have taken the trouble to ask these questions, the rest of the book should take less time to peruse.

With notes on your questions and preliminary answers in hand, settle in to read the main text, that is, the remaining chapters, of the book. As you read, pay attention to the sources the author cites in the bibliography and footnotes. The bibliography (along with the introduction) will give you some idea of the debates in which the author has situated his work. Perusing footnotes takes time, and you will need to decide how to read these. You may want to look over all the footnotes for a given chapter after you have read that chapter, for example, instead of checking every note as you read. With practice, you will learn when to examine footnotes closely, and when to skim. For example, if an author's claim seems exaggerated, it is a good idea to look carefully at the footnotes to see on what evidence he or she has based that claim. As you do more research in a particular subject or topic, you will find that you recognize the many of the major authors and works in a field.

Read the final chapter, conclusion and any afterward or epilogue with the same care that you gave to the introduction of the book. Ask yourself if the author fulfilled his or her stated goals. If not, what did the author demonstrate? Make sure to write down these final summary notes on what you thought of the book at this point--you will want to look at these notes to decide if you need to use the book for your paper.