Selected New Reference Books

"One of W. E. B. DuBois's great ambitions was to publish an encyclopedia, much like the Britannica, of Africa and its diaspora. Alas, that was not to happen. Appiah and Gates have taken on this challenge, and this second edition is a worthy effort. It greatly expands, updates, and corrects the 1999 edition. This work includes both scholarly and popular topics, with expanded coverage for Latin America and the Caribbean. There are about 27 percent more signed entries overall, for a total of 4,434. More than 1,100 of these have been updated; 173 entries are reprinted from American National Biography (CH, Sep'99, 37-0001). Although the work has an extensive subject-oriented bibliography, previous encyclopedias are omitted, including these important ones: Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History [Africana and Uris Ref E 185 .E54 1996], ed. by J. Salzman, D. L. Smith, and C. West (2nd ed., 2001, CH, Sep'96, 34-0013); the Gale serial Reference Library of Black America [Africana Ref E 185 .R33 1997]; and the more popularly oriented African American Encyclopedia, ed. by R. K. Rasmussen (2nd ed., CH, Mar'01, 38-3609). Also omitted are two excellent sources on the African side: Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara [Africana and Olin Ref DT 351 .E53x 1997], ed. by John Middleton et al. (CH, Sep'98, 36-0045), and Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History [Africana and Olin Ref DT 29 .E53x 2003] , ed. by Paul Zeleza and Dickson Eyoh (CH, Apr'03, 40-4370). Of course, there are also similar works for North Africa and the Middle East. Appiah and Gates assembled a distinguished advisory board and recruited 270 scholars to write the entries. Most of the contributors are based in the US, but many come from Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. The set includes a 150-page index and a topical outline in 14 sections. The 18-page bibliography (probably more useful) is also arranged topically, using different topics with some overlap. Unfortunately the citations are not complete. In the list of maps, charts, and tables, page numbers are omitted, and one must consult the index to find them. A ten-page chronology completes the apparatus. Plentiful cross-references are listed as separate entries within the alphabetical arrangement and also within the articles. Some entries have short bibliographies, especially the longer articles such as those ending with the designation "an interpretation." Country entries include good maps and charts and also "At a Glance" inserts giving basic facts and statistics. The arrangement could have been improved. Some of the articles are not intuitively titled and are therefore hard to find, e.g., "King Leopold's Ghost" and "Image of the Mulatta." Titles of articles are not always consistent, e.g., "Women Writers in French-Speaking Africa" but "Female Writers in English-Speaking Africa." Cornell West's important article on W. E. B. DuBois is filed under "W," but there is another article on DuBois filed under "D." These small points aside, this is an important work that complements but does not replace the encyclopedias noted above. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and up; general readers." [The parenthetical citations above refer to previous reviews of other titles in Choice. --MOE]

Review source: Choice, 1 November 2005, via Bowker's Books in Print online

[A. Kagan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]

[MOE]

"Covers the origin, development, and results of all major national security policies over the last seven decades. National security has been a widely debated yet highly researched topic that has tremendous global scope. However, there has never been a single, concise reference source to aid the student in providing accurate and informative answers to the many challenging questions of how, why, when, and where national security has evolved. A thoroughly interdisciplinary work, the encyclopedia views national security from a historical, economic, political, and technological perspective." [This is a subject area where in need of a good reference source. This title really fills that gap. --MOE]

[quote from Sage catalog]