Book Review Guidelines

History of Media Studies welcomes book reviews that concern books relevant to our editorial mission. In line with the journal’s ethos, we aim to offer book review authors a less rule-bound path to reviewing than is typical in other journals.

Book reviews should generally fall between 1,000–2,000 words in length. Authors of reviews should write reviews that:

• Establish the topic of the book.

• Attend to the main arguments in the book.

• Consider the book’s use of evidence in pursuit of those arguments.

• Evaluate the book’s successes and failures.

• Contextualize the book in the galaxy of publications around it.

We believe that it is important to remain balanced in book reviews. This means that book reviews ought not to be written simply in order to promote—or to denigrate—a book or its authors. The book reviews in History of Media Studies serve the editorial mission by looking out for the long-term interests of the broader history of media studies. This requires a careful consideration for how to nurture our field of inquiry.

Direct quotations from the book under review should be relatively short and should always cite the page number in a parenthetical, in-line citation. Citations of all other works should conform to Chicago Style (17th ed.) Notes & Bibliography.

Please be sure to follow this general format for the bibliographical information of the book under review and to add your institutional affiliation:

Author. Title of Book: Subtitle of Book. 310 pp., figs., index. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. $29 (paper).

Your Name

Institutional Affiliation

Citations: Citations should conform to Chicago Style (17th ed.) Notes & Bibliography.