MAA Reviews

I've checked the "find only books that have been reviewed" box but when I hit "search" it complains that I have not entered any search criteria. What gives?

 

Those check boxes at the end don't count as "search criteria." If you really want to find every single book that we have reviewed, add some tautologically true search criterion. For example, search for books published between 0 and 3000, or for books with prices between $0 and $100,000,000,000.

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How do you decide which books get reviewed?

Some critical conditions have to be satisfied before we can review a book:

• We must get a copy of the book. If we don't have it, we can't review it.
• We must be able to find a reviewer who is willing to do the review.

There are other factors that play an important role. In order to be reviewed, the book should appeal to more than a strictly specialist audience. It should be good enough (or, sometimes, bad enough) to merit the attention. If a book fits very well with the interests of a reviewer, it has a higher chance of being reviewed even if it is quite specialized: reviewing has its privileges!

In general, we will not produce MAA Reviews for books that are collections of articles or proceedings from conferences. For those books, often all one really needs to see is the table of contents, which we try always to include. We will rarely try to review books that are very technical. At the other extreme, we will do our best to review books that have the potential to serve as textbooks.

Of course, all of the above can be overruled in special cases. That's why MAA Reviews has an editor, after all.

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Are all new reviews highlighted on the front page?

No, not even close. There are just too many reviews for that. If you want to make sure you see everything that's new, use the "advanced search" and indicate that you want to see the books whose reviews are dated this month and later.

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Will all reviews eventually show up on Read This?

This didn't happen when Read This! was active, and certainly won't happen now that the site is inactive. Instead, we will allow free access to the eight current MAA Reviews. But you should certainly become an MAA member or get a subscription, becasue there's a lot more to the site than the newest reviews.

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What does it mean when a book's page says "An MAA Review is planned"?

It means that we hope to review the book. That said, we could be at several different stages of the process:

• It could be that the book has been received and is sitting on my "to be reviewed" desk waiting for a reviewer.
• It could be that a reviewer has been found and is working on a review.
• It could be that we have a review in hand but haven't posted it yet.

The third stage is usually very brief, so if you see a book with that notation it will almost certainly be in either the first or second stages of the process.

If you see such a book listed and it is something you're anxious to see and would like to review, email the editor. There's a decent chance that we'll still be looking for a reviewer, particularly if the book came out recently.

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What does it mean when a book's page says "MAA is not planning a review of this book"?

It means that we aren't currently planning to review the book. It doesn't mean that we would turn down a review if one were offered; we'd certainly consider an offer to review such a book, though we may no longer have a copy to send you. See also the next question.

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This book had "a review is planned" and now it says "MAA is not planning to review"!

Alas, if a book sits on our "to be reviewed" pile for too long, we'll eventually give up.

Also, alas, sometimes a reviewer agrees to look at the book, but hates it so intensely that we decide that reviewing it is not worth the time and effort.

Finally, clerical errors do happen!

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What's with these categories? What's the difference between an anthology and a collection?

We actually started with only two of these: "textbook" and everything else. But then it became clear that we should have a few more. So here is a rough guide:

• Anthology: a collection of papers by several different authors. See also "Festschrift" and "Proceedings".
• Collection: a collection of papers by one author.
• Dictionary: anything that has entries and definitions.
• Festschrift: an anthology put together in honor of someone.
• General: anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, but especially "trade books" aimed at the general public.
• Handbook: an overview of some topic intended as a "ready reference."
• Manual: in our usage, restricted to a software manual.
• Monograph: a book whose main goal is to explain a specific subject.
• Problem Book: a collection of problems.
• Proceedings: an anthology connected to a conference or meeting.
• Report: an official report from some entity.
• Sourcebook: a collection of (usually historical) source material.
• Student Helps: a book meant to supplement textbooks.
• Textbook: a book intended for course adoption.

At the graduate level, the difference between a textbook and a monograph becomes very tenuous. Our decisions there have been somewhat arbitrary.

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Do you list every book you receive?

We list every mathematics book we receive. We interpret that very broadly. But we won't list a biology book, a book on how to build furniture, or the latest Susan Grafton book (unless it has a mathematician in it).

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May I send you...?

You needn't complete the sentence. Yes, you may. But we make no promises. Email the editor for the mailing address.