Review a Book for IJAHS

If you would like to be on our list of potential book reviewers, please complete the reviewer form and send it to the editor. Providing details about your own background and the specific topics and areas of interest to you will help the editor select appropriate books for you.[[links to reviewer form]]

Please keep in mind that our primary focus (and the core of our audience) centers around history, although we review books from a number of disciplines. Whatever the focus of your particular review, please mention specifically the aspects that will be of special interest to historians of Africa.

When books are sent out for review, the editor assigns an approximate length and a due date. If you feel the book deserves consideration at greater length, please discuss this with the editor before expanding your review. If you need more time, please report this to the editor and propose a more feasible deadline.

Book Review Style Sheet

  • Send your book review by e-mail if possible (either pasted into the message itself or as an attachment), and keep a hard copy available until we confirm that we have been able to convert your document to our system, otherwise, please send one printed copy, double spaced.
  • At the top of the first page, please indicate the title of the book under review in the following form:

THE PEOPLE OF SALE. By Kenneth L. Brown. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976. Pp. xiv, 265; map, 15 b/w illustrations. $18.00 cloth, $4.95 paper.

  • For an edited collection:

ISLAM AND COLONIAL RULE IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICA, 1905-1965. Edited by Ross Dunn and Ghislaine Lydon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xx, 356. $75.00.

  • In referring to individual chapters in an edited collection, please be sure to cite the author’s full name in the first instance.
  • Try to keep footnotes to a minimum, but when you refer to another scholarly work in the text of the review, please include a full footnote citation: for a book: Author’s name, Book title: and subtitle (city, year). For an article: Author’s name, “Title of Article,” Journal Title 3, 2 (year), 156-58.
  • Quotes from the book under review should be shown in parentheses in the text (p. 25).
  • We prefer book reviews that are about 2-3 double-spaced pages (roughly 500—750 words) in length. If you feel the book you are reviewing deserves fuller treatment, please get in touch with the editor to propose a revised length.
  • The reviewer’s name (in caps) and institutional affiliation or city should appear at the end of the review, on separate lines. Please do not include the department or program.