Steps to Finding Book Reviews
Step 1. Identify author, title and publication date of the book.
Step 2. Identify citations to book reviews. These resources will help you identify the title of a journal and the date, volume number and page numbers where a review appeared. Some of the databases include the full-text of the article.
Step 3. Find the review. Use NUsearch to locate journals and link to full-text online or find the print volume on the shelf in the library. Use the 
button to link to full-text. If Northwestern doesn’t have access to the online or print journal we can get it for you through Interlibrary Loan.
New York Times and New York Review of Books
- New York Times Historical1851-2016
- New York Times Current1980-Present
Reference Works for Book Reviews
- Book Review DigestBook Review Digest contains excerpts of many of the reviews and indicates the size of the reviews. Reviews are listed alphabetically by authors of books reviewed, with indexes by title and subject. Coverage: v. 1-v. 105, no. 4 (1905-2009)
- Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals, 1886-1974Includes journals in history, sociology and political science. Coverage: v.1-15
- Index to Book Reviews in the HumanitiesIndex reviews in approximately 470 periodicals devoted to the humanities, including any history or social science reviews which appear in these periodicals. Published annually until 1990. Coverage: v.1-31(1960-1990)
- Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen wissenschaftlicher LiteraturIBR contains over 900,000 entries about book reviews. The print resource is international and interdisciplinary, the reviews have been published in approx. 6,000 academic journals mainly in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Coverage: Jahrg.1 (1971)-Jahrg.30 (1999/2000)
- New York Times Book Review Index, 1896-1970v.1. Author index.--v.2. Title index.--v.3. Byline index.--v.4. Subject index.--v.5. Category index.
Databases
Many article databases contain records for book reviews. For recommendations on databases in your subject area, see the Research Guides page and browse by subject. Here are a few recommendations for databases with fairly broad subject coverage
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowThis multidisciplinary database provides access to articles from journals, magazines, and reference sources across all subject areas. Coverage is primarily from 1980 to the present, with some older content.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowDigitized, full-text versions of core scholarly journals across disciplines.While coverage of these journals goes back to the first issue, for most journals the most recent issues will be for 3-5 years ago.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowNot all content is available full text to Northwestern community.
Searchable database that provides access to the content of journals and ebooks published from over 200 of the world’s most distinguished university presses and scholarly societies. Covers such fields as literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and others.
The Premium Collection is MUSE's foremost collection of over 700 high quality, peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journals from leading university presses, not-for-profit publishers and prestigious scholarly societies.