Review by Choice Review
Merriam-Webster's desk answer book supplies 25,000 entries on a variety of subjects. Introductory materials include a preface which notes that articles range from 40 to 700 words, averaging 105. Editor Mark A. Stevens indicates the book is intended for secondary students and general readers. Explanatory notes cover alphabetization of compound and hyphenated terms, headword style, pronunciation, and romanization. Boldface bullets mark details that appear in stand-alone entries (e.g., under Florence Nightingale, a bullet precedes "Crimean War"). Editors provide a page of abbreviations, 52 pronunciation symbols, 10,000 pronunciations, and 70,000 cross-references. The 350 maps and diagrams and 1,300 photos and line drawings clarify details and encourage browsing. Maps give scale and latitude and longitude. Illustrations include a line drawing of the workings of a pendulum clock, a painting by Die Br"ucke, a photo of singer Edith Piaf, and an illuminated manuscript of a 12th-century Winchester Bible. Typefaces are clean with suitable balance of roman, boldface, and sparse italics, and schematic drawings are labeled and shaded (e.g., human circulatory system, fertilization of a human ovum, fern life cycle, orchestra layout, DNA). To the editors' discredit, the text perpetuates bias toward white males, showing a dreary succession of male portraits. Selections include Aphra Behn, Joan of Arc, Barbara Jordan, Princess Di, Betty Friedan, and Toni Morrison, but omit illustrations for Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Sally Ride, Elizabeth Blackwell, Margaret Sanger, and Gloria Steinem. There are no entries for Lillian Gilbreth, Hypatia, Wilma Mankiller, Khadijah, Margaret Knight, Nancy Ward, Mary Ann Bickerdyke, Madeleine Albright, Tansu Ciller, and Juliette Gordon Low and no mention of Auguste-Charlotte Bartholdi in the entry for the Statue of Liberty. General readers and undergraduates. M. E. Snodgrass; independent scholar
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
This new one-volume desk encyclopedia is a noteworthy addition to Merriam-Webster's "collegiate" line of reference products, which includes Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (first published in 1898) and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus (first published in 1976). The encyclopedia is a collaborative effort between the editorial staffs of Merriam-Webster's and Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica articles selected for abridged inclusion were chosen by a group of academic consultants, including editors of dictionaries and specialized encyclopedias as well as publishers of introductory college textbooks. A list of the consultants and their affiliations is included, as is a list of freelance writers and editors involved in production of this reference tool. In all, there were more than 100 contributors to this three-year-long project. The encyclopedia was written for the college student, as the title suggests, but is also an appropriate research tool for upper-level high-school students and a general adult audience. More than 25,000 brief articles range in length from 40 to 700 words. They are alphabetized letter by letter. Variant spellings or names are printed in bold type, and pronunciations are provided. Cross-references to other articles are indicated by bullets. More than 1,650 black-and-white photographs, maps, diagrams, and other illustrations enhance entries. For each country there is a fairly detailed political map (sometimes as large as half a page), as well as a locator map. There is coverage of topics and people in art, business, geography, history, literature, medicine, music, religion, science, and more. Similar in scope and content to Webster's New World Encyclopedia (Prentice Hall, 1992), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia is recommended for libraries that do not own a recently published one-volume encyclopedia. With 51,000 entries, The Columbia Encyclopedia, now in its sixth edition [RBB Ja 1 & 15 01], is more comprehensive, but Merriam-Webster's compact size makes it easier to handle for quick reference questions.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
A new title in the "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate" line, this one-volume reference resulted from a collaboration with the editorial staff of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In fact, the articles here (over 25,000) are based on Britannica's flagship 32-volume set. The editors have managed to pack considerable information into this work, which is physically the same size as the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (Houghton, 1994) but has twice as many pages and half again as many entries. And what entries they are! The articles are well researched, clearly written, and comprehensive yet keep between 40 and 700 words in length. In addition, the cartographers did an amazing job. The map included with each country entry is readable, visually interesting, and filled with useful information; cities other than the capital are included, as are landmarks and other distinguishing features. Each of these entries also contains a smaller map showing the country's location on the globe, more evidence of the attention to detail one finds throughout the work. All in all, this is a wonderful encyclopedia. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DManya Chylinski, Ctr. for Business Knowledge, Ernst & Young, Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
