Talk:Independence Lost/GA1

GA Review
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Nominator:

Reviewer: Czar (talk · contribs) 18:06, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi —thanks for your work on this topic! Before getting into the full review, I couldn't help but notice the short bibliography on a book that has had much a wider profile. I was able to dig up a slew of reviews for consideration in the article. These are opinions from academics that for basic GA breadth WP:GACR) a reader would expect to be sampled in the article, both in terms of their scholarly assessment of the work and in their confirmation of the book's contents, which can then be used to source the Synopsis section.



Are these new or have you seen them before? I would recommend taking some time to work through them (if it'll take more than a few days) and renominate later, but let me know if you prefer to put the nomination on temporary hold. While incorporating these reviews, I recommend reading through the advice in Copyediting reception sections to avoid "A said B" language and in creating syncretic overviews of critical opinion. czar 18:06, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Oh, thank you so much for this, Czar! I already use the McConville source, but good call on the other reviews; I don't quite know how, but I didn't see them until now! I think I'd be able to incorporate these over the weekend, so I think a hold will work okay. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 18:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Apologies, didn't get to this yet but will be able to over the next few days. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:13, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, I think I added all the reviews you listed that I could squeeze anything useful out of, as well as a couple more I pulled up from digging. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:56, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Any update on this? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:55, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It's only been two days :) Full review incoming. czar  11:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Not to nag, but any updates? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 03:06, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Reception
 * I found this section particularly hard to read. Many sentences in this article are overloaded with detail, making it hard to follow. Unpacking each to carry less weight would make it more readable for a general audience. Other sentences are unclear based on their use of passive voice, which makes it unclear just how widely and how these reviewer opinions are held. Those sentences can be made more specific of who is saying what and why it matters to the paragraph.
 * "Academic reviewers praised the book's focus on the Gulf Coast region" – This is a long, winding sentence. If you break it into two sentences, you can show which reviewers gave this praise (ideally with page or in-text citations since it looks like it's citing three sources) and separately how it's characterized. Also are they praising the Gulf Coast focus or highlighting a Revolution-era history that doesn't focus exclusively on the Thirteen Colonies?
 * "DuVal's emphasis on Native American groups to Revolution-era North America was also emphasized." Emphasized twice? I also don't see where the source makes this emphasis.
 * Some of the bigger picture is missing here. The synopsis should cover any matter-of-fact overview of how DuVal focuses (decenters) traditional narratives of minutemen and founding fathers, and then the Reception answer should be addressing what reviewers make of that. What was the rhetorical benefit of a "kaleidoscopic narrative"? What was beneficial about connecting indigenous confederacies and the American Confederation period? Similarly, what was this approach missing?
 * "DuVal's narrative abilities received praise, particularly in her abilities" – This doesn't quite follow the source and borders on non-neutral. Is McConville praising her narration? The citation appears to be referencing the author's "obvious relish and flair for narrating battles". I don't see specific praise from Kolb either. It's best to not mention praise unless it is clearly said as such and instead to phrase in terms of what reviewers (who) highlighted what.
 * The New Yorker "intrepid history" clause is connected with the "expansive detail" clause as if those points are related but it's unclear how. I.e., how can LJ and J of Am H echo praise if that praise is not mentioned in the previous sentence. (Also is it indeed praise?)
 * "The book's extensive use of primary materials has been noted as particularly admirable." Passive voice – by whom and why? If its use of primary materials is particularly noteworthy (which it usually isn't for a history book) why is its usage here noteworthy?
 * "The book drew scholarly comparison to Alan Taylor's" If only one review is making this comparison, is it categorically true that the book drew scholarly comparison?
 * "Criticism towards the book generally takes" – As Wikipedia editors, we cannot categorize generalities since we are not synthesizing across all reviews, but we can say that two reviewers critiqued Continental historiography. (Does anyone besides McConville actually call it that? I don't see it in Piker.)
 * There are enough reviews that I would imagine basic breadth to show a more detailed discussion of the major strengths and weaknesses of the book.

Synopsis
 * With such a variety of secondary source material (reviews), is there a reason this section isn't sourced? The synopsis is straightforward enough that its major points are laid out in the reviews and should be cited there for verification.
 * It's unclear exactly how the character narratives work into the Structure. Each character's narrative is introduced, and then how does it return to the narratives?

Background
 * Is there any detail on the author's process of writing the book or its publication?
 * It's unclear why the author's previous and next works are relevant to this one. If the point is the scope of those works, is that not already covered by the introductory sentence describing her focus?
 * "shifting the study of the United States' social and political history to its place within a broader international context" It's unclear what this means.
 * '"Continental history" forms a dominant motif of DuVal's work' How can a historiographical school be a motif? Would it be more accurate to say which of DuVal's works fit into that school. Also more useful than the label itself is to explain what about DuVal's works depart from ways of writing about the Revolution previously. Remember that a general audience is reading this without necessarily having background on American historiography, hence this section.
 * Does the critique of this approach belong in the Background? Isn't it already covered in the Reception?

I highly recommend Copyediting reception sections for writing Reception sections about books and create a summative picture without delving into original research. For an example of a recent history book GA that did this well, see How the Red Sun Rose. I can see some of the above edits being straightforward but others will require potentially extensive rewriting, so let me know if you'd prefer to keep the review open or closed, and I'm happy to return either way. Apologiges for the delay but I knew it would be a lot of writing. :) czar  12:54, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry for delays on my part as well, but I feel it would be best to close the review; you did a very thorough analysis and I'm gonna need a bit more time to polish this up. Thank you very much for your work on this, by the way; I always work with the goal of eventually bringing stuff to FAC, and I think this has been looked over on essentially that level of detail. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:24, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Most of my focus above is on WP:GACR (breadth) but happy to go more in depth for FAC in the future (or less in depth for another GA nomination) in the future. Happy editing! czar  21:55, 21 April 2024 (UTC)