LENGTH: Minimum of 800 words, Maximum of 1000 words

Writing Assignment 1 is a book review of one of the following class readings (you choose which one you would like to write on):
(1) Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Part 2, Chapters 1 and 2
(2) Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Section 1 (you will also want to use the Preface)
(3) Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Moral, Section 2 (you will also want to use the Preface). Note that this work is quite complicated and will be difficult to write on.
(4) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8

This is academic book review (modified for our purposes) and so it will have the following parts:
• Statement of the author’s goal(s)
• Summary of what the author argues
• Your recommendation of the book (strong points, weak points, who would find it interesting)

The rubric below describes what each of these parts entails and how much each is worth. As the rubric shows, the most important part of the book review is the summary. This is worth half of the total grade and should take up most of your review. Your recommendation should take up no more than one paragraph. The first step to making a good summary is figuring out what the author’s goal or goals are (which is why I ask you to begin by describing that). Sometimes, the author makes finding their goal easy. For example, Kant explicitly states his goal: “The present groundwork is, however, nothing more than the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality” (p. 47). For other writers, it will be necessary to do some investigation. Once you have the author’s goal in mind, you will want to break the work down into parts (the author often does this already) to make the work more manageable. You can then describe how each of the parts contributes towards the goal of the work.

Please double-space your assignment and use a 12-point font. Submissions should be in Microsoft Word format.
Item Description Points
Statement of Author’s Goals Does the paper offer a plausible statement of the main goal(s) of the selected reading? 2
Summary of Author’s argument Does the paper show how each part of the reading contributes towards the stated main goal? Is time spent on points proportionate to their importance to the main goal? 5
Recommendation Does the paper provide an opinion, with reasoning, of what the strong points and the weak points of the work? Does it recommend what sort of reader, if anyone, would benefit from the work? 2
Spelling and Grammar 1
TOTAL 10 points

Rubric:

Citations. You are expected to provide citations to the work you are reviewing to support your interpretation of the work. Citations can either be paraphrases or direct quotations. In either case, a reference to the relevant page number in the reading must be provided. There is no need to follow a specific format (e.g. MLA). Simply provide the page number, using the edition provided on TRACS, to the work being reviewed.