HOW TO READ A HISTORICAL MONOGRAPH (OR ESSAY) Steven M. Fountain - Dept.

of History, Washington State University, Vancouver All scholarly works in history have arguments. No author writes a book or article without specific goals and some point to make and authors want to convince their readers of something. A scholarly work should generally be evaluated on at least two criteria: 1] Are the author's goals (the questions they are trying to answer) significant and adequately formulated? 2] How well does the author achieve their goals? Does the author, in fact, prove their thesis or theses? Scholarly books and articles follow certain conventions in organization and format; awareness of and attention to these conventions will help you to understand and evaluate the author's argument. The following steps and questions are designed to facilitate your reading and analysis. Step One: Cover and Title Page Read your book or article carefully beginning with the cover and title page. If you have a copy with the dust jacket, or a paperback, bear in mind that blurbs are advertising designed to entice you into buying the book. Just because Professor X or Famous Person Y thought the book "smashing" or a "tour de force" does not mean that everyone does, or that you will. If you are reading a monograph, look at the full title page and its reverse. The publication data (author, title, place of publication, publisher, and date of publication) may or may not be important in interpreting the book. One might ask, for example, whether a book written by a Briton and published in Britain might have a different perspective on America than a book written by an American and published in America. When was the book first copyrighted? Has it been revised and republished in more than one form? Which edition do you have? At the least, the title page is what you should use when you cite the book in a bibliography or footnote. Do not depend on the cover for this information! If you are reading an article, carefully read the title, and, if possible, the full title page of the journal. Journals (and some monograph series) usually have a description of their mission or a stated affiliation with a professional organization. Who is the intended audience? What is the focus of this particular journal - regional? topical? thematic? How might an article published in Anthropology (a different theoretical approach) differ form one in Arizona History (a regional journal) and differ yet again from the Hispanic American Historical Review (a distinct perspective on the Southwestern US)? Professional academic journals make decisions to accept or reject articles based, in part, on editorial biases. Step Two: Prefaces & Introductions Carefully read the preface (if there is one) and the introduction. Sometimes the introduction will be presented as the first chapter of a book. Due to length, these are usually less detailed in articles, but still may contain important information. In these two places, the author will often tell you the following things: 1] Why they wrote the book and how the author became interested in the topic. 2] What questions the author hopes to answer and what issues they will address. Usually these questions or issues are suggested by what other historians have or have not said on the subject. The author will sometimes survey a historical literature, point out its defects (questions unanswered, areas not covered), and then state how the work at hand will try to answer some of these defects.

3] The author should then indicate how they will answer the questions or address the issues to which the book is devoted. There should be a thesis here somewhere! The author may also give some indication, even if only general, of the results of their inquiry. You should determine the author's position on each of these issues before proceeding. This is often the point at which the author makes their case for the significance of their subject. Step Three: Contents The table of contents will tell you something about how the author is organizing their argument. Are the chapters organized chronologically, topically (thematically), or some combination of the two? If chronologically, into what periods does the author divide the subject? If thematically, into what topics does the author organize the material? Alternatively, is the article broken into subheadings or sections? What does this tell you about the authors choices and argument? Step Four: Titles Consider the title. Does the title accurately convey what the author is treating in the work? Does it give you any additional clues about the author's approach or argument? The overwhelming trend concerning titles is, roughly, the following format: (catchy or evocative phrase: what this book is really about, dates). For example, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800. Both the sections before and after the colon can give you subtle (or not so subtle) information about the author's intent and point of view. In the example just given, the phrase "revolutionary experience" seems significant: what is "revolutionary"? Is it purely a chronological description (i.e., during the American Revolution) or was the experience itself in fact transformative? If the latter, how? Why does the author choose the words they do? Step Five: Conclusion Read the conclusion (in monographs, this may sometimes be an afterword), especially if you are reading an article. Though this may seem odd, the reading History for an academic purpose is not the same as reading a mystery novel for entertainment. You will not spoil the surprise ending by reading ahead. In fact, this step should help you pinpoint the case being made and which arguments the author presents as particularly important. You should revisit the conclusion after reading the body, but this step should provide a roadmap of the authors argument that you can then assess throughout the body of the work. Step Six: Perspective Before moving beyond the introductory matter, you should pause to consider the author's point of view. No work is entirely objective and value-free. Every author has a particular point of view or "bias." So, the question is not whether a work is "biased" - all books and essays are. The question is whether, or to what degree, the author's "bias" or point of view distorts their evaluation of the subject matter. Has the author's point of view seriously limited their research? Has it blinded the author to equally plausible interpretations of the material which conflict with their own conclusions? Sometimes, you may disagree with the author's conclusions because of their point of view but still find much useful material in a book. In trying to determine the author's point of view, ask yourself the following questions. First, which historical forces does the historian stress? Usually historians characterize themselves as "political," "social," "economic," "intellectual," environmental, cultural, or some combination of these. This can give you a clue as to which historical forces the author gives the

most causal weight and which strategy they have chosen. For example, Mary Beth Norton, who wrote the book mentioned above on the "revolutionary experience" of women, considers herself a "social historian." Will this influence her treatment of the subject in ways that are different from someone who considers herself a "political" or "economic" historian? Second, can you detect any personal views about the way the world and people are (or should be) in the author's work? Finally, are there any indicators that the author espouses a particular theory or creed that will influence the work? Step Seven: The Body & Sources Your reading and analysis of the introductory matter of the book or article should give you a clear sense of what the author will try to accomplish in the body of the work. You should then read the body with the aim of determining how well the author actually achieves these goals. Read each chapter or section as a distinct unit. Do not forget the footnotes or endnotes. They are a critical part of scholarly books and contain much useful information. Stop after each chapter and determine 1) what the author argued in that chapter (or section) and 2) what sources the author used to support the argument. Include this information in your notes. Proceeding in this fashion, when you complete the chapters your notes will record the essential building blocks of the author's overall argument. Consider the following questions: 1] Are the author's final conclusions supported by all the material they have presented in the chapters? Do any of the author's conclusions go beyond the material presented? Does the author draw any conclusions that are not warranted by their preceding arguments or evidence? 2] Is the argument, as built and elaborated in the chapters, logically consistent? Are there things the author should have considered which he or she did not consider? Is there material that seems superfluous or is not adequately linked to the author's overall argument? 3] Evaluate the author's evidence for their assertions. What sources does the author use? Are these sources adequate and appropriate (should the author have used more, a greater variety of, or different sources)? Did the author interpret sources correctly? Can the sources tell us what the author claims they do? Step Eight: Organizing Your Thoughts Think about the work as a whole. Review your notes and make sure you have a clear grasp of the book as a single unit. Return to sections that remain unclear. Then review your assignment. This may be only to discuss the book in class - in which case you should come to class with notes as described above, ready to discuss. The assignment may be a book review or prcis, in which case you should be ready to formulate your ideas into a thesis, organize your material in a clear, logical way that reinforces your thesis, and write a strongly argued, concise, well written essay, using examples and evidence from the book to illustrate your arguments. This step-by-step approach may strike you as overkill, but it essentially describes what professional historians do when they read a monograph or article. Following this approach should enable you to fully absorb a work and come to critical conclusions. Give it a try.
Though each modification of this document results in less and less physical similarity, a 12-step handout by Jim Williams and Nancy Rupprecht at Middle Tennessee State University was a predecessor to this scheme. They based their version on an original handout from Maureen Miller at Hamilton College. If you wish to borrow it, please acknowledge these sources. (Fountain rev. version #4, 1/13/08)