Critical Reviews • Religion and Theology 69

These sections may provide novice writers with detailed advice on common writing errors. It is unfortunate that the citation section of Chapter 3 makes consistent reference to the 16 th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (2010). While the differences are likely minimal, one would expect a 2018 imprint to refer to the current, 17 th edition (2017) of the style manual.

The book is also a reading guide, but this is more of a mixed bag. The first chapter and section 6.1 provide helpful guidance for readers new to the disciplines of religion and theology. Other sections, especially Chapter 8 (“Study the History of Religion”), tend to interpret passages for the reader and generalize from limited information in ways that are less helpful. This may be a function of space; an eight-page chapter is a tight fit to introduce even parts of the origins and histories of religion as well as comparative religion.

The weakest part of the manual is Chapter 4: “Become Familiar with Quality Information Sources.” It advises students to find quality information sources through five means: The American Academy of Religion website, The Society of Biblical Literature website, dissertations and theses (especially the CRL search engine), studies by think tanks, and the Library of Congress website. The list of sources presented here is disappointing for its glaring omissions. Mentioning neither monographs, journal literature, nor subject-specific reference works, the authors bypass a student’s local institution completely in finding resources for introductory religion and theology courses. Although there are references at other points about consulting “a library to see how much published work on your issue exists” (26) and moving on from general encyclopedias “to academic articles that you will find by following links on your college library’s web page” (133), there is no real guidance on how to effectively search and navigate a library catalog, an academic database, or even Google Scholar.

The five “quality information sources” highlighted by Chapter 4 are also noteworthy (and perplexing) for the sources they actually include. The AAR and SBL websites provide a lot of information about their respective memberships, publications, and related topics. They are effective for discovering information about the study of religion and biblical literature, but they are not (and not designed to be) good sources of quality information about religion and biblical literature themselves. Theses and dissertations are seldom advisable information sources for introductory students for various reasons: the best bits are often eventually published elsewhere in a more usable form and, given their nature and typical length, they are usually not user-friendly sources. The advice to conduct a “Google search on ‘think tanks’” (101) to discover quality information is as bizarre as it is irresponsible, especially for introductory students. Advanced students, adept at recognizing and filtering out bias, may find valuable reports made available by think tanks, but novice students should probably avoid private research institutes of unknown provenance and agenda. This think tank section is one of the shortest in the book and is (thankfully) contradicted by instruction later in the book about evaluating resources (138). Finally, visiting the Library of Congress website as a source of quality information is vastly more sound advice, but it still assumes a level of information and digital literacy that many undergraduates in introductory courses have yet to attain. Access is a concern here, too, for non-digitized resources; they may not be held locally. This entire section should either be drastically restructured or omitted altogether; this is a writer’s manual and reading guide, and so it could merely point readers to quality research manuals and guides.

In its present form, this book is not recommended for purchase; its deficiencies outweigh its strengths. The chapters on writing could benefit students seeking a resource in that area, but there is likely very little in them for which an equivalent might not be easily located. The care and detail of these sections only highlight some of the disorder and confusion in others. While the chapter on finding quality information sources is certainly the low point, other sections have their own problems. It is likely that the work in its present form is trying to do too many things to do them all adequately and cohesively. Chapter 5 provides cursory information about conducting interviews, focus groups, case studies, and surveys on religious topics, but the book later acknowledges that most “college papers will be based on your use of secondary sources” (133). Chapter 6 encompasses only ten pages but purports to teach students to read scholarship, critique an academic article,