Reviewing American history: coverage and timeliness in American Historical Review, CHOICE, and Journal of American History Available to Purchase

This study examines reviewing tendencies in CHOICE, Journal of American History, and American Historical Review in the early 1990s in order to compare their strengths and weaknesses. Among the factors assessed were the number of titles reviewed by each, the degree of overlap for 1,017 different titles that were reviewed in these journals, subject coverage in the field of American history, and timeliness. The study found that JAH reviewed 50 percent more titles than the other two journals in 1991 and had the best coverage for most subject categories in American history. AHR reviewed the fewest books in most categories and contained the least number of unique titles. Although numbers of titles reviewed in each category differed, percentage of coverage was similar within most categories in all three journals. However, several categories revealed some divergence in coverage. Reviews in CHOICE preceded reviews of the same titles in JAH and AHR by 9.3 months and 10.9 months, respectively.