You must submit a brief explanation of how your selected book or article fits into IR scholarship. You should be able to glean much of this from the article or book itself, but you ought to put this into your own words, rely minimally on direct quotations, and expand on it. For this task, I want to hear
(1) what general topic the author is addressing (e.g., civil wars),
(2) what more specific topic within that area the author is addressing (e.g., the causes of civil war initiation),
(3) what work the article is critiquing or complementing (e.g., existing work on civil war initiation that has previously ignored a set of conflicts), The third component is the core of the assignment and should take up the most space in the paper. The third component of this literature review should identify at least four peer-reviewed journal articles or books that your selected piece cites
(4) what new thing the author believes they are adding to this literature (e.g., an improved method or novel data), and
(5) why the author believes their new contribution to the literature is important (e.g., because it will allow us to more accurately answer the question of when and where civil wars begin).