Using my book review of The Alchemy of Us as an example
When materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez published her book with the subtitle referring to materials – “How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another” – I thought this would be an excellent book to review for the materials community via MRS Bulletin.
Looking back over the review, I’m thinking about the “tools” I utilized when choosing how to approach this type of writing. Here are 5 tools I identified.
- Passion
Be passionate about the book you’re reviewing. If you don’t care about the book, it will be difficult to draw inspiration to write about it. When you’re passionate, you would be able to write as though you were talking about the book to a group of friends.
I’m passionate about Ainissa Ramirez’s book The Alchemy of Us because she includes connections of new technology with the broad demographics of society. For example, the chapter about black & white photography shows how Frederick Douglass utilized the medium to represent the African American community as individuals in their own right against the backdrop of US slavery, and years later a chemist working for Kodak fought against the company’s use of Polaroids that subjected South Africans to discrimination. Yet, this is not the theme I chose for the review. Had I written the review during the current climate where we are experiencing the global revolution of the Black Lives Matter movement, I might have thought otherwise! However, at the time I wrote, I was thinking about how the scientific elements in photography lean more narrowly toward materials chemistry, which I thought might misrepresent the expanse of the book.
- Theme
Choose a trend in the book that pulls it together. This allows you to have a focus and tie everything you write about to that focus. With a focus, it is also easier to decide what details to include.
In my review, the theme I chose is the way the author connects people and technology in social history that supposedly have nothing in common, but are brought together by the materials involved. For example, I chose the concept of “time.” I was then able to use this concept for the hook.
- Hook
Devise an opening statement to pique your readers’ interest.
I chose a riddle: “What do Ruth Belville, Albert Einstein, Louis Armstrong, and David Eagleman have in common?” The riddle demonstrates the very theme I chose. At the end of paragraph 3 I begin to answer the riddle: “This is where Ruth Belville comes into the story.”
- Story
Choose a “story” from the book to expound upon.
By choosing the concept of “time” for the theme, I have Ruth Belville’s story to tell, which fascinates me (passion) because I never heard of her and Ramirez tells a story about what Belville does that I had never heard: “In 1908, Belville made her rounds in London with her trusty pocket watch named Arnold.” Belville checks the time on her pocket watch against the clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, which she then sells to people in London so they can compare their timepieces with hers for accuracy. Materials—such as steel, brass, ruby, and piezoelectricity in quartz – play a role in the accuracy of time pieces over the years. However, for various reasons, it is difficult to be precise – a role that materials science does not seem able to solve (yet): “With further exploration in physics (Einstein), music (Armstrong), and neuroscience (Eagleman), [Ramirez] shows how ‘precision’ – that holy grail – keeps evading our reach.” It matters that I focus on the materials discussed in the book because of my audience.
- Audience
Know who your audience is.
Knowing my audience directed me to choose selective examples rich in details of materials science. The book, however, is not written strictly for a materials science audience but rather for the broad public readership. So I also needed to distinguish why the book would be of interest to the professionals in this field: “I can see this book making it to the “gift list” for (1) family and friends, so that they can understand the field I work in; (2) science writers, so they can study a grand example of how to tell a story that makes materials research understandable to the general population; and (3) materials researchers, who can see their work from a perspective beyond the laboratory.”
I’m curious how others have approached book reviews. I welcome your comments!
-Judy Meiksin