This rather critical (but otherwise not objectionable) review ends with "A final caveat: I come to Bogdan's book largely ignorant of his previous work. Bogdan often references his previous books and it is entirely possible that the answers to some of the complaints that I have aired are to be found in that large body of work."
So, question to readers of this blog: is there an obligation on reviewers to read the author's prior work (especially if it is referenced in the book)? My gut reaction was, surely not. But on second thought, I am not so sure. When I review works and I notice that some cited text plays a a crucial role in the argument I often take a close look at it. Now in my regular line of work that is often some primary source, but sometimes it is secondary source. So, I can easily imagine that an author thinks his/her work is crucial to ongoing debate/discussion. (Of course, there is high possibility of self-deception here.) But, to be concrete, I can easily imagine John McDowell writing in such a way such that Mind & World is presupposed in non trivial fashion. (I have not read much of him since he published that book, so feel free to suggest other examples.)
What do people think: can we expect our reviewers to realize that we are building a corpus?
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