Customer Reviews

Writing in Political Science (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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I've been using this book in my freshman political science seminar for several years and it has many strengths. I especially like the first few chapters on the nature of political inquiry and what it means to think and write critically about politics. Its check list of properties of a good research paper is especially well done. The section on annotated bibliographies is very useful to get students started on papers.

Now for the weaknesses: the chapter on the format and examples of conventional research papers is limited to comparative, analytical and position papers. The formulae given for writing each type of paper doesn't seem especially useful to me. I'd prefer that students formulate a real question, write a literature review and use data to form useful conclusions. The paper formats provided do not do this. I've written my own handouts on paper formatting and structure rather than assign this one.

Despite its limitations, this is a very useful book for undergraduate political science majors. If I was starting out in the field, it is exactly what I'd want to know.

The service, or promptness of the delivery of the book, was good. And book arrived in good condition.

I was assigned this book as an undergraduate and quite honestly, didn't give it much of my time. But looking it at it now, while doing my MA, I wish I had! The practical information about writing theses, footnotes/endnotes, and stylistic problems seems especially important for any student. The examples and formats weren't particularly useful to me...I think the space would have been better spent on straight-up research papers instead all the unique ones, like writing policy recommendations and book reviews. Perhaps this will be useful to some students though. All in all, I think it's a great reference to have the shelf and I use it now as a guide to answer any of the basic questions about research that I may have.