Library Journal Review
| Macmillan Library Reference set a standard with its 1996 five-volume Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (edited by Jack Salzman and others) and the 2001 supplement. The second edition, prepared under the general editorship of historian Palmer (Princeton) in cooperation with the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, offers a fresh standard that shifts the focus from the United States to the Americas as a whole. Down from 2500 in the first edition, the expanded 1300 entries range in length from about a half-page to ten pages. Two-thirds of the entries have been revised, and the remaining entries are new. A statistical appendix accompanies a thematic table of contents and a subject index for easy cross references. Some 450 black-and-white photographs appear throughout, and a selection of reproduced primary sources further enhances this handsome set's value as an efficient research tool. In contrast to the Macmillan set, Oxford's three volumes focus on blacks in U.S. history. Prepared under the general editorship of historian Finkelman (Univ. of Tulsa) and ranging in length from 500 to 12,000 words, the nearly 700 signed articles document blacks' experiences from the first slave ships to Frederick Douglass's death. The set offers depth, reaching most important persons, events, and developments through 1895 but is written for easy access with multiple cross references, chronologies, topical outlines, and a comprehensive index. Bottom Line Both sets are highly recommended, and though some libraries may want to choose between the two depending on scope, larger libraries could do well with both sets in order to serve readers and researchers from secondary school through specialized graduate studies. The Oxford set is also available electronically with a subscription to the upcoming African American Studies Center, which includes 19 other Oxford references, and some libraries will have to balance the high online subscription price against the time value of investing in new print sets.-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
School Library Journal Review
| Gr 8 Up-The approximately 700 main and subentries in African American History include biographies both of prominent African Americans and of other influential figures, such as John Brown and Lydia Maria Child, along with discussions of wider topics, such as âÇ£Stereotypes of African Americans.âÇ The articles close with numerous cross-references and meaty bibliographies, enhanced in the final volume by a detailed chronology (to 1895) and index. Articles analyzing the racial attitudes of major Founding Fathers and each president, plus others that tackle many seldom-examined subjects, such as African Americans in the shipbuilding caulkerâÇÖs trade or relations with immigrant Asians, exemplify the unusual depth of coverage here. PalmerâÇÖs expanded version of Culture and History widens the North American focus of the original (Gale, 1996) and its 2001 supplement to include topics and people in Caribbean and Latin American history. Comprising reprints, new contributions, and updated entries in roughly equal numbers, the 1300 alphabetically arranged articles range from three paragraphs on novelist William Attaway to multipage surveys of âÇ£Social Dance,âÇ âÇ£Afrocubanismo,âÇ and other broad subjects. Each entry closes with a bibliography, and nearly all feature cross-references. The previous edition contained more than twice as many illustrations, but this one improves access to its many updated charts and tables by moving them to a separate volume, which also features more than 130 pages of primary-source documents and a comprehensive index. Both sets merit consideration for collections supporting academically oriented research, but next to Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.âÇÖs essential, monumental Africana (Oxford Univ., 2005), they make supplemental purchases.-John Peters, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved. |
