Book Review: Metaphor and Knowledge: The Challenges of Writing Science

on the other. Chapter 2 focuses on the fundamental differences between virtual peer review and face-to-face peer review in terms of time, space, and interaction. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the complexities and challenges of theorizing and implementing virtual peer review. Chapter 5 then introduces strategies and guidelines for teachers and students, emphasizing that virtual peer review strategies and guidelines can be adapted to other online collaborative writing contexts. Virtual Peer Review is more than a valuable addition to scholarship in the field of computers and composition. Business and technical communicators can benefit from Breuch’s examination and conceptualization of virtual peer review. Breuch directs our attention away from a good-versus-bad mentality by focusing not on whether or how computer technologies can help us do better work but on what we can do in a virtual environment that we do not typically do or even think of doing. In other words, she is not interested in a mere comparison of face-to-face communication versus virtual interaction between peer writers; rather, she argues for and offers an example of the rich potential of virtual peer review. She points out directions for further research; the list of questions she provides at the end of the book can be viewed as an invitation to scholars in writing-related fields, business and technical communication certainly being a prominent one of them, who are interested in deepening their understanding of virtual peer review in their own contexts.