book review assignment read a book then write summary

For this assignment, you are to select a book relating to East Asian history since 1600, read it, and write a 6-8 page critique about it. The critique itself should be well organized and fluently written, and should address the following questions, though you need not address them in this order:

1) What was the author’s purpose in writing the book?

2) What kinds of sources were employed and how might these have shaped the book? (For example, the author might have drawn exclusively from English language sources, not using important Asian-language sources.)

3) What is the book about? (This should not be just a summary of the book’s contents. You can certainly describe the content of the book but that should also be accompanied by a description of the themes and/or arguments presented in the book.)

4) What are the author’s conclusions and were they adequately supported?

At the beginning of your review, you should provide information for your book using the following format:

For example : Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

The book I choose is: A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century 1st Edition. The author is: Charles Holcombe. Here is the cover of this book below. (you need to buy an e-book online to do this assignment. It should be less than 10 dollars in some websites.)

Note: You don’t need to read the whole book very carefully. Just make sure you use your own words for this assignment.