The Philosophers' Cocoon

NPM paperback edition & review

This is just a quick note that my 2020 book, Neurofunctional Prudence & Morality: A Philosophical Theory, is now out in paperback ($22.95). The book also just received this nice review in Journal of Moral Philosophy, where Gregory Robson (Iowa State University) calls it "a stimulating and important book on the natures and complex interrelations of prudence, morality, and neuroscience." You can get another 20% off by entering the discount code below!:

Writing a good book review?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

On the topic of book reviews, I'm interested in any general advice regarding the process of writing them. Really interested in advice on any aspect -- e.g. do you read the book any differently, and if so, how? how do you choose which points to develop? what do the best book reviews do well, and what are some pitfalls or ways they could go poorly? These are just some starting points. Really any advice is helpful. This is my first time writing a book review. It's for a journal if that's relevant. Also curious how long people spend on writing them so I can get a sense of how much time to budget, though I know it'll vary a lot!

These are all excellent questions. What do you all think? For my part, I tend to think the best reviews discuss books chapter by chapter, giving the reader a fairly clear idea of what the major arguments are, and how successful the reviewer thinks they are. I tend not to like reviews that pick and choose which parts of the book to focus on (e.g. just to criticize those parts but ignoring other parts). I also think good reviews come across as 'fair minded', whatever exactly that means--though it certainly involves using the principle of charity. Here, I think Philosophy in Review's five kinds of reviewer guidelines are fairly apt:

Five Kinds of Reviewer

(adapted by Roger Shiner from Susan Swan, 'Nine ways of looking at a critic', Toronto Globe and Mail 30th November 1996. E23)

1.      The Spankers are out to administer discipline over anything from ill-conceived plot-lines to misplaced commas.

2.      The Young (and Old) Turk sees the review solely as an opportunity to demonstrate her or his own intellectual superiority and above-average intelligence.

3.      The Self-Abusers feel they could have written a better book on the subject, given half the chance, and describe it at great length.

4.      Gushers skip over discussion of the book; they just want to communicate the enjoyment of reading it.

5.      The Good Reviewer will represent the book (without lapsing into long-winded summaries) so the reader gets a sense of what the book is like whether the reviewer likes it or not. The good reviewer will also offer an interesting or revealing point of view from which the book can be perceived critically.

As for how long to spend on a review, I'm not sure: maybe a few weeks of sporadic work? You want to do a good job, obviously, but you shouldn't let writing a book review crowd out time for other things! But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Sharing book reviews with authors?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

How common, expected or advisable is it for someone writing a book review to share their review with the book's author before it's submitted?

This is a good question. Another reader submitted the following response: 

I am a book review editor - generally reviews are better if you do not send it to the author beforehand. What we want is an impartial review. Feel free to be critical, if the book warrants it. Are you really going to do that after passing it by the book author?

Indeed. On the one hand, I sort of get why one might want to share a review with a book's author before publishing it. It could give the author a chance to dispel uncharitable (mis-)readings, for example. On the other hand, it could enable the author in question to put subtle or even overt pressure on the reviewer to change their review, and in a way that might involve a power imbalance (such as if the author being critiqued is a well-known senior figure and the reviewer a junior academic). So, I'm a bit torn, and think it might depend on context. If, for example, the review is highly positive, then concerns about the book author illicitly influencing the review seem much smaller. But, then again, if authors share reviews in cases like these, might that incentivize them to write more positive reviews in the first place? I don't know!

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Publishing (unsolicited) book reviews in grad school?

In our January "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I know you guys have done posts on book reviews in the past. However, I've looked through a number of journals and all of them do not accept unsolicited proposals for book reviews. Do you have any advice for how a PhD student is to go about publishing an unsolicited book review in a decent journal?

What do you all think? I suspect the thing to do here is to just contact the journal (though some journals state on their website that they don't accept unsolicited reviews). Also, although the OP didn't ask about this, I'd personally caution grad students against publishing book reviews. Why? The short answer is that they don't add much (if anything) to one's CV as far as the job market is concerned, and they can be a real distraction from things that matters far more for the market: publishing original work and developing as a teacher. I knew some fellow students in grad school who published book reviews but little else, and it seemed to pretty clearly be a mistake. Book reviews take a lot of time. You have to read an entire book carefully, summarize relevant parts of it, and then critically engage with the arguments. While this can of course be a good exercise and service to the discipline, my worry again is that it's probably not worth the opportunity costs and tradeoffs. But these are just my thoughts, fwiw. 

NPM book review in Metascience

This is just a quick note that Metascience just published this nice review by Tom Buller (Illinois State University) of my 2020 book, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory.

As a quick aside, my recent book chapter, 'Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation', addresses one of Buller's critical concerns: that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has broader functions outside of moral cognition. In brief, my answer is that moral cognition is a learned capacity that puts a wide variety of innate capacities (including the vmPFC) to new uses beyond what those capacities were selected for in evolutionary history. I also think the book itself does address some of Buller's other concerns, but of course I'd think that as the book's author. ;)

In any case, I appreciate the charitable review!

Becoming a book reviewer (and should grad students do it?)

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

How does one get to or is asked to do book reviews for top or decent journals? Related question, how do you know when your paper is good enough to be sent to a journal? I'm currently a PhD student.

We've already covered the related question here recently. Particularly if you are a grad student, the safest way to determine whether a paper is publishable is to send it to some faculty mentors and see if they think so! As you progress through your career, you may come to trust your own judgment--but in general, it's still good to send your work to other people (including conferences) to see how others receive it.

In any case, I'd like to consider the question about becoming a book reviewer. Here, another reader gave the following advice, which seems right to me:

I recommend that you contact the journal editor or the journal book review editor. They may ask for a c.v. and information that might indicate that you would be qualified to write a book review for a scholarly journal.

However, I'm curious: do readers think graduate students should even try to review books? Here's why I ask: when I was in graduate school, I knew some students who seemed to think that book reviews were a good use of their time. But, at the time and especially in retrospect, it doesn't seem that way to me. Some of the students I knew who did this only published book reviews, and never got around to actually publishing any articles--and they seemed to think that book reviews would look good on their CV. But this is not the case, right? The chance that a book review is going to help you get a job post-PhD, it seems to me, approximately zero. This isn't to say that book reviews are worth doing. I think they are, and have reviewed a number of books myself. I'm just not sure that it's a good idea for grad students to do them.

What do you all think?

Book review tips?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, anon writes:

I'm a recent PhD and have agreed to review a book that is directly in my AOS. I've never done one of these before, so I'd appreciate any how-to advice the Cocoon community can offer. The recent(ish) posts this year about writing referee reports were super helpful, both for understanding what a good report should look like, as well as explaining how to actually write one, so something along those lines would be ideal.) Thanks!

Benedict Eastaugh replied:

Thom Brooks, in "Publishing Advice for Graduate Students", discusses how to write a book review in section I, "Publishing 101: Book reviews as an introduction to publishing".

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1085245

I agree that Brooks' guide is a great resource, but I'm also inclined to think that the Cocoon community might be able to give anon some more fine-grained advice. What do you all think? Do you have any tips for writing a good review? Any "do's" and "don'ts"? 

Book review of Karen Kelsky's "The Professor is in"

Kelsky, Karen (2015). The Professor is in. The essential guide to turning your PhD into a job. Three Rivers Press. 

This book is aimed at job candidates in academia, graduate students but also more seasoned people looking for their first tenure-track job. The author has a consulting firm, with the same name as the book, which helps people with their dossier materials, negotiating job offers, prepping for interviews and editing grant proposals. Before starting her firm, she was a tenured professor, a position she left to pursue other things. 

Some questions about the book review process

I personally know a few authors who have received negative book reviews that, in their opinion, were not just negative but in some way(s) below an "appropriate scholarly standard." Now, presumably, no one likes to receive a negative review--and in some cases one may simply be upset at receiving one. Some book reviews, however, arguably are below an appropriate scholarly standard--for instance, by simply stating the reviewer's opinions/biases without much, or any, argumentation in support of their negative assertions. I have read reviews like this recently, where a reviewer boldly states, "This book is bad in respect X", but without any further justification for why anyone should actually believe the book is bad at X.

Now, of course, one way to respond to this issue is to simply trust readers--trust them, that is, to tell the difference between conscientious, well-reasoned reviews and less conscientious, poorly reasoned ones. And indeed, I've seen cases of this online--cases where someone shares a poorly reasoned book review on social media, and everyone basically agrees it is a terrible review.

Still, given the stakes involved--given that poor reviews could potentially undermine a person's case for tenure or promotion, not to mention their perception in the discipline--several questions come to my mind: