prize17-10, Exercise 1: Three questions for a jazz history

Model answer (an imagined example; your answers depend on the work you choose):

Work chosen: a one-volume survey history of jazz.

1. Whose recordings does it use? It leans heavily on commercial records, so the early chapters mostly discuss bands that were given the chance to record. It admits this in a note, which is a good sign.
2. What does it call "first"? It describes the 1917 record as "the first jazz record" without comment in one chapter, and then qualifies it in a footnote, so I would check the footnote and the discography it cites.
3. Where is the line drawn? It treats fusion in one short chapter and sets it aside as a commercial detour, which shows a view of the canon.

Care: say what you found in the text, and quote or point to the page. "The author is biased" is not a finding; "the author gives fusion four pages and bebop forty" is.