"Efficient reading" of academic books in history

Parents Forum
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A historian suggests that one can get most of the ideas in an academic book by reading the:

  • Title and structure
  • Introduction
  • Conclusion
  • Chapters (introduction and conclusion)
  • Notes

Another historian agrees and believes that many academic books are written to facilitate this type of reading:

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I’m a history professor, and I agree with the above. “Gut” in this context is definitely a verb (and grad students in history are introduced to it rather quickly).

It’s true that history books (whether works of primary research or larger syntheses) are written with more or less conventional structures to facilitate this kind of reading. I spend a lot of time with my students discussing efficient reading and and varying your approaches to reading for different purposes. In addition to encouraging active reading practices like taking notes (in the margins, highlighting, using post-it notes to make key points and evidence), I suggest students think about three main approaches to reading books and articles:

  1. Quick skim: when you’re just using a book to get a sense of the state of the field or its contribution to a general area of inquiry. Here, you’d mostly look at the introduction and perhaps skim the chapter structure (or section structure in articles) and notes.
  2. Engage for big ideas and argument: Read chapter structure, intro, notes, along with the introductions of chapters and sections. Otherwise skim for big points and evidence.
  3. Deep dive: when a book (or a section thereof) is absolutely essential to a paper you’re writing, you’ll do all of the above, plus a close read of relevant chapters or sections (could be parts or all of the book).

Some guides I find helpful and recommend to my students:

https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/permanent-features-advice-on-academia/how-to-read-in-college/
http://wcaleb.org/blog/how-to-read

Note that this advice applies to secondary works of scholarship. Advice for reading primary sources (including essay- or book-length primary sources) is entirely different.

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