Reviewing

Ronald S. Berman writes in The Sewanee Review:

My method was to pick a book with some determinable public interest–for example the autobiography of Max Eastman or Hannah Arendt’s great work on Eichmann–and simply to read everything available on the subject. I would talk to whoever might know about it, then sit down and try to sum up by review not only the book but all the issues implied. It meant unnatural objectivity because that kind of writing is about other people’s ideas, and doing them justice or injustice is really harder than handling your own. Reviewing is an art form in which no one ever succeeds, a fact which is good for us all to realize.