referencebooks

The Hispanic Databook, 2nd Edition

Subtitled: Detailed Statistics and Rankings on the Hispanic Population, including 23 Ethnic Backgrounds from Argentinian to Venezuelan, for 1,266 U.S. Counties and Cities.

David Garoogian, Editor; Laura Mars-Prioetti, Editorial Director; Leslie Mackenzie, Publisher.

Published by Grey House Publishing, Inc., 2004.

This is a big paperback book measuring 8.5" by 11" and running to 1920 pages, plus a user's guide and several pages of ads for reference books in the back.

This second edition updates a 1994 book from Toucan Valley Publications.

Using raw data from the 2000 Census, this book presents statistical tables providing demographic information on Hispanics in the U.S. by place, with information on country of ethnic origin; and rankings by state, county and city on a large number of demographic attributes.

Among the attributes covered are population figures by place; age; household size; language spoken at home; educational attainment; income and poverty; and information on housing.

Typical statistical tables are based on an attribute (like "Educational Attainment: Four-Year College Graduates") and give the data by place, state-by-state and county-by-county within each state, showing the figure for the total population there, the Hispanic population there, and the figures for each of 23 countries of ethnic origin for each county.

Following these statistical tables is a section ranking U.S. places by the same attributes.

The book is simply a collection of hard data. The User Guide also describes the CD-ROM version, which has the same data for a dramatically larger number of places.

This is a useful collection of data on the U.S. Hispanic population, but all compiled from census data which is accessible using tools, albeit complex ones, that are available on the US Census website.

The New Joys of Yiddish

By Leo Rosten; revised by Lawrence Bush

Published by Three Rivers Press, 2001

This is a trade paperback measuring 7" by 9" and running to 458 pages including a brief English-Yiddish glossary at the back, plus 32 pages of preferatory material.

Leo Rosten's original book, The Joys of Yiddish, was a big hit. Since Rosten's death much has changed that has an effect on the book, given that it is more than just a dictionary of Yiddish words in English, but also a commentary on Jewish culture. Bush's revision is more than an update, however. He says in the Introduction:

"Rosten recognized that Yiddishkayt, the pathways and spirit of the language, was finding a new homeland in American culture. Unlike many Yiddish scholars, he delighted in this fact and treasured every Yiddish word or phrase, intonation or sentence structure, that had entered into English usage. Each, to his mind, was a "carrier" of the complete genetic code of Yiddish. In writing The Joys of Yiddish, Rosten was mapping the Yiddish genome.

"The map was incomplete, of course. Rosten left out the double helix of modern Yiddish literature and poetry. He avoided the recombinant material of Yiddish political rhetoric and social criticism. He ignored most of the non-American strains of Yiddish culture. He chose humor, anecdote, and breezy erudition as his best tools because, as he wrote in his preface, "a good story is exceedingly hard for anyone to forget." As a result, certain more sober Yiddishists were unhappy that Rosten, the kibitzer, won the commercial "patent" on Yiddish through the success of Joys. (A punch line from one of his many jokes might serve to express their attitude: "Eh! If I had his voice, I'd sing just as good!")

What this book is is a semi-dictionary of Yiddish words and phrases that have entered the English language, at least in some locales. Unlike the book Anglish/Yinglish, which I reviewed last September 3rd, this one does more than simply provide a definition and pronunciation. It gives colorful illustrations of the words' use, often in the form of anecdotes and jokes, that help provide a rich sense of the words' special unique meaning and flavor. Consequently the entries are often closer to encyclopedia length than dictionary length, and there are far fewer of them than in an ordinary dictionary.

For an example of what is included, here are the first fifteen entries in the "C" sequence, alternate transliterations omitted:

• cabala
  
• Chaim Yankel
  
• chairlady
  
• challah
  
• Chanukah
  
• Chasid
  
• chaver
  
• chazzen
  
• cheder
  
• Chelm
  
• chevra
  
• chillul hashem
  
• chometzdik
  
• chotchke
  
• chozzer
  

Here is one sample entry, a shorter one:

pupik

Pronounced PU (the u of "put") -pik, to rhyme with "look it." From Russian: pupok, "navel."

Navel.

Pupik is used in a variety of broad, colorful expressions - ironic, maledictory, and ribald.
A sheynm dank in pupik ("a pretty thanks in the navel") means "Thanks for nothing."
"Zol vaksn tsibeles in zayn pupik!" - "Onions should grow in his navel!"
"What does he do? He sits around all day looking at his pupik."

A classic definition of an unrealistic, impractical type is this: "He's the kind who worries whether a flea has a pupik."

This is a really fun and educational reference book, a good one to refer to or to read cover to cover.

Mosby's Pocket Guide to Cultural Assessment, 2nd Edition

By Elaine M. Geissler

Published by Mosby, 1998

This is a 4.25" by 7.25" paperback running to 326 pages including the index plus a brief foreword and preface.

This is a practical guide to cultural differences intended for medical professionals to use as a quick reference to help them better understand patients and clients from diverse backgrounds. The preface says,

"The purpose of this guide is to help focus your attention on the potential variations a culturally diverse client may, or may not, exhibit. It is based in generalizations that must not be mentally converted into stereotypes by the user. Pull out this guide when you are faced with someone from a culture that is unfamiliar to you. Use this guide to start quickly and efficiently increasing your awareness and understanding of potential similarities and differences--the generalizations. For unless you are conscious of the cultural patterns of behavior a patient might exhibit, you will not think to address them in your assessment. To be culturally competent with the many cultures with which you may on occasion be faced is unrealistic. To not use a guide such as this for fear of stereotyping only impedes movement toward delivery of culturally relevant health care. I am willing to risk criticism for stereotyping; but in return, I ask you to thoughtfully build on the information inside these pages with an individualized cultural assessment...

We all recognize the importance of understanding cultural differences in a multicultural society, but usually find it very uncomfortable to actually make any generalizations about a cultural group that actually say what those cultural differences are. It's dicey. So it's not surprising that one of the only types of reference books out there that simply provide access to the soundest available generalizations about cultural groups come from medical field, where everyone acknowledges the good intentions involved. (Business books that tell you how to act in other countries are also pretty common and often good.)

Entries in this book are by country and are usually about a page long. Opening the book at random and I'm at the entry for Bulgaria, which is a shorter entry. This entry gives brief statments about Bulgaria's geography, it's languages, ethnic groups and religions, some group-specific data on prevelance of AIDS (other diseases show up in this section for other countries), food practices and intolerances, childhood immunizations used, and "other characteristics" (for Bulgaria, it says "The head motions for yes and no are the opposite of those used in the United States") followed by a bibliography of three sources for the information given. The entry on the Philippines is longer, just over three pages. It includes some additional information, like "predominant sick care practices," "health care beliefs," "health team relationships," "family's role in hospital care," "dominance patterns," "eye contact practices," ("Some may fear eye contact; however, if it is established it is important to return and to maintain eye contact") "touch practices," "perceptions of time," ("Time generally moves ahead slowly. Life is lived from day to day.) "pain reactions," ("People may appear stoic if they believe that pain is the will of God and that God will give them the strength to bear is."), etc.

This is a very useful and interesting little book.

Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography, and Terminology

By Eric Joseph Epstein and Philip Rosen

Published by Greenwood Press, 1997.

This is a 6.5" by 9.5" hardbound book running to 416 pages including the bibliography and index, plus a foreword, introduction, and acknowledgments.

There is a thorough, multivolume encyclopedia of the Holocaust; this book is much less ambitious, aiming only to provide brief dictionary entries about numerous people, places, and terminology relating to the Holocaust.

The word "Holocaust" is kind of like the word "Semite," in that it has an older, general meaning and a more Jewish-specific meaning. An anti-semite is understood to be someone who hates Jews, not someone who hates the broad ethnic or linguistic group that includes Jews and Arabs. Similarly, though to a much lesser extent, the word "Holocaust" usually refers to the German genocide against the European Jewish population during World War II. The numerical loss was devastating in terms of the number killed in comparison to the total world Jewish population, and this is perhaps the major reason that it is viewed as a Jewish tragedy moreso than a tragedy for Communists or Gypsies or Homosexuals, who were also put in concentration camps and killed en masse. It was also, of course, not the only genocide in history or even in the 20th Century, but has the distinction of being the most systematic and modern, justifying those who claim it is uniquely horrific in history. Nevertheless, for a reference book on the 20th Century European Holocaust, this one is, as usual, disappointingly focused on the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective, relatively ignoring the tragedy as it was experienced by other groups.

Aside from that major flaw, this is a well-done, informative book that includes much useful information, very little of it general knowledge. For an example, here are the first fifteen entries in the "M" sequence:

• Ma'apilim
  
• Maccabi
  
• Macedonia
  
• Mach, Sano
  
• Machtergreifung
  
• Madagascar Deportation Plan
  
• Magyar Zhid
  
• Majdanek
  
• Maly Trostinets
  
• Mandel, Maria
  
• Mann, Thomas
  
• Manstein, Field Marshal Erich von
  
• Mantello, George Mandel
  
• Maquis/Maquisards
  
• Marmalade
  

These fifteen entries cover three pages and range in length from two lines to about a half a page. Within each entry, cross-referenced terms are in bold. The prose is concise and factual. For most entries there is one reference given to an item for further reading.

A very useful book for information on people, places, and terminology relating to the Jewish side of the 20th Century European Holocaust.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture

Edited by Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly.

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2005.

This is a 6" by 9" hardbound book running to 363 pages including the index, plus a list of illustrations, notes on contributors, a preface, acknowledgments, a chronology, and a map.

An introductory page that appears before the title page in this book says:

This Companion provides an authoritative introduction to the historical, social and stylistic complexities of modern Irish culture. Readers will be introduced to Irish culture in its widest sense and helped to find their way through the cultural and theoretical debates that inform our understanding of modern Ireland. The volume combines cultural breadth and historical depth, supported by a chronology of Irish history and arts. A wide selection of essays on a rich variety of Irish cultural forms and practices are complemented by a series of in-depth analyses of key themes in Irish cultural politics. The range of topics covered will enable a comprehensive understanding of Irish culture, while the authors gathered here - all acknowledged experts in their fields - provide stimulating new essays that together amount to an invaluable guide to the shaping of modern Ireland.

This overview of Irish culture is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters. The two parts are "Cultural politics" and "Cultural practices and cultural forms." The eighteen chapters are:

1. Introduction: Ireland and modernity
   
2. The survival of the Union
   
3. Language, ideology and national identity
   
4. Religion, identity, state and society
   
5. Republicanism, Nationalism and Unionism: changing contexts, cultures and ideologies
   
6. Irish feminism
   
7. Migration and diaspora
   
8. The cultural effects of the Famine
   
9. Modernism and the Irish revival
   
10. Poetry in Ireland
    
11. Irish sport
    
12. Projecting the nation: cinema and culture
    
13. Folk culture
    
14. Irish prose fiction
    
15. Irish music
    
16. Modern architecture and national identity in Ireland
    
17. The visual arts in Ireland
    
18. Irish theatre
    

The writing is at a high level, but the knowledge it assumes is of a pretty general sort. The essays are very substantial and informative. This is a valuable reference book for anyone needing to know about modern Ireland.

Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery

Edited by Randall M. Miller and John David Smith

Published by Greenwood Press, 1988.

This is a 7" by 9.5" black, clothbound book running to 866 pages including a chronology, a lengthy list of contributors, an a substantial index, plus an introduction and "A Note on Using the Dictionary."

Containing nearly 300 articles on topics related to African American slavery in the U.S., this book is aimed at a mixed audience of scholars and public library users.

For an idea of what is covered, here is the full list of entries in the "D" sequence:

• Dance
  
• Declaration of Independence: Slavery And The
  
• Delaware, Slavery In
  
• Democratic Party
  
• Demography
  
• Diet
  
• Disciples of Christ
  
• District of Columbia, Slavery In The
  
• Douglas, Stephen A. (1813-1861)
  
• Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)
  
• Dred Scott Case
  
• Drivers, Slave
  
• Dubois, Silvia (ca. 1768-1884?)
  
• Durnford, Andrew (1800-1959)
  

Oftentimes reference books that are called "encyclopedias" would really more accurately be called "dictionaries," because they contain several brief entries on a page. The case with this one is the reverse: it's called a "dictionary," but its articles really are encyclopedic in length, depth and scope.

The articles in this book are highly informative, well-written, and don't require significant background knowledge to understand.

This is a very useful book whose only major downside is its datedness, as scholarship in the history of American slavery has no doubt been significant over the past two decades.

African-American Writers: A Dictionary

Edited by Shari Dorantes Hatch and Michael R. Strickland

Published by ABC-CLIO, 2000.

This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 484 pages including a list of the writers by genre, a chronology of writers, a chronology of historic "firsts" in African American literature, the bibliography and the index, plus a brief foreword, preface, and acknowledgments.

This is a straightforward literary dictionary of African-American writers, covering individuals who created or create poems, plays, short stories, novels, essays, opinion pieces, and other works. There are hundreds of writers included. Entries range in length from brief paragraphs on a two-column page to several pages.

The preface describes an interesting strength of the book:

You can also use our encyclopedia to find out some of the interesting connections among authors. For instance, what are some of the common characteristics and distinctive aspects of the narratives of former slaves? Which African-American writers were helped by the 1930's-era Federal Writers Project? Which writers were influenced by a distinctive region such as rural Mississippi or urban Detroit? Which writers were orphaned at a tender age? Which writers had to overcome tremendous economic and social hardships in order to put pen to paper? How did it affect writers to have particularly light skin and European facial features? Which writers mentored a series of contemporary writers? Which writers put their careers on hold while they stopped to raise children - their own or those of others - and which writers started writing as a means of supporting their children?..."

The index can be helpful in uncovering these links, but many require spending quality time with the book in order to reveal them.

Opening the book at random, I'm at page 155, looking at the entry for Lorraine (Vivian) Hansberry, which runs for two and a half pages and has a publicity photo. The entry is very informative, going into interesting biographical detail about her background as well as her political activities, in addition to her literary contributions.

This is a very useful book.

Hip Hoptionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop Terminology

By Alonzo Westbrook

Published by Broadway Books, on their Harlem Moon imprint, 2002.

This is a 5" by 7.5" paperback book running to 225 pages, including a list at the end of Hip Hop personalities, plus some introductory notes.

It's really more of a glossary than a dictionary, since only brief definitions are given, without pronunciation or usage notes or etymological information of the kind you'd find in a true dictionary.

The introduction does a good job of expressing the importance of new African American lexicons, referring back to American history from the days of the slave trade up through the 1970's.

For an idea of what's here, the first fifteen entries in the "O" sequence are:

• o
  
• Oaktown
  
• O.E.
  
• off the bat
  
• off the chain, off da' heezy f' geezy, off the dome, off the meat rack, off the meter, off the wall
  
• off the cuff
  
• off the hook
  
• off the titty
  
• off the wanger
  
• OG
  
• OJ
  
• OKC
  
• okie-doke
  
• old school/old skool
  
• old soul
  

Some of the words and phrases I wouldn't have guessed were hip hop terms - I knew "okie-doke" meant okay before hip hop had been born. But I didn't know that it meant "the runaround" or "trickery, up to no good." In some cases, though, a slang term is given with its regular, traditional white American meaning (e.g. on the money: on target). Maybe these slang terms have hip hop roots and I never realized it.

Commonly, I find definitions that I wish were a little richer, especially the ones for words meaning "good." These words all have shades of meaning in their real contexts that are lost if you define them as an exact synonym for "good."

I'd summarize this as a fun and useful book that's disappointingly thin on detail.

American Jewish Desk Reference

By the American Jewish Historical Society.

Published by Random House, 1999.

This is an 8" by 10" hardcover book running to 642 pages including the index, plus brief preferatory materials.

The book has something like 900 entries covering all aspects of American Jewish history and culture. It is arranged in fourteen chapters covering different spheres of life, with alphabetic entries under each (except the first, which is a chronology). The fourteen chapters are:

1. History of the Jews in America
   
2. Judaism and Community in America
   
3. Rituals, Celebrations, Holidays, and Family Life
   
4. Law, Government, and Politics
   
5. American Zionism and United States Relations with Israel
   
6. Business, Labor, and Finance
   
7. Education and Intellectual Life
   
8. Sports and Games
   
9. Art, Architecture, and Photography
   
10. Music, Dance, and Theater
    
11. Radio, Television, and Film
    
12. Books, Newspapers, and Magazines
    
13. Language and Literature
    
14. Science, Medicine, and Social Science
    

The book finishes with appendices titled "Finding Out about Jews Around the World," and "Organizations and Resources."

Entries range in length from a paragraph to seven pages or more, and are readable and informative.

Opening the book at random, I'm in the section on Art, Architecture and Photography, looking at the entries for George Segal, Ben Shahn, Cindy Sherman, the Soyer Brothers, and Saul Steinberg. The majority of the books entries are biographical entries like these, and they are also the briefer entries.

I wondered how Noam Chomsky, a controversial figure among many American Jews, would be represented in the book. The index has no fewer than twelve sub-entries under his name, which is not bad. Nearly all of these refer to the page-and-a-half biographical entry on him, which begins, "As a linguist, Noam Chomsky is incontrovertibly among the key figures in Western thought in this century. His innovative thinking has changed the way we conceptualize language and its acquisition, and many have called him the creator of modern linguistics. As a political activist, Chomsky is controversial, inspiring admiration and rage in equal parts." In this book, his entry is in the section on Language and Literature.

Overall I find this a useful and well-done reference book.

Racism in Contemporary America

Compiled by Meyer Weinberg.

Published by Greenwood Press, 1996. Copyright held by the author.

This is a 6.5" by 9.5" clothbound book of 838 pages including the author and subject indexes, plus the table of contents and a three page introduction.

The title doesn't indicate it, but what the book is is a major bibliography of racism in contemporary America - not an encyclopedia. This one is number six in the series Bibliographies and Indexes in Ethnic Studies. This one is the third in its own sub-series of bibliographies on racism, which together contain more than 36,650 entries.

This work is composed of simple, unannotated references to books, dissertations, legislative hearings, monographs, journal articles, investigative accounts, and other material on racism under 87 subject categories. The first fifteen of these subject categories are:

• Affirmative Action
  
• Africa
  
• Anti-Racism
  
• Antisemitism
  
• Autobiography and Biography
  
• Black Towns
  
• Blacks and Jews
  
• Business
  
• Children
  
• Citizenship
  
• Civil Rights
  
• Class Structure
  
• Collective Self-Defense
  
• Colonialism
  
• Community Development
  

The introduction defines racism, which is important for communicating the scope of the book:

"A common misunderstanding of racism is to equate it with racial prejudice exercised by some individuals against other individuals and actuated by sentiments of hate. Racism, however, is far more than the sum of individual hates or dislikes. It may, in fact, have little or nothing to do with such sentiments. Racism is an ideology or system of ideas that allocates superiority or inferiority to separate sections of people so as to award privileges to the former and deprivations to the latter. Thus, racism rests on a base of differential worth of human beings and the legitimacy of unequal treatment according to presumed superiority and inferiority."

The introduction goes on to explain the meaning of institutional racism and then to describe the scope of the larger categories in the bibliography.

Bibliographies get old faster than many other types of reference books. At nearly ten years old, age is the major weakness of this bibliography, which includes citations as old as the late 80's. There has as yet not been an update to this edition. Bibliographies are less essential than they used to be because of improved access to scholarly indexes in electronic form on most campuses, but they can still be important for thorough research. Actually, in some cases older bibliographies have added value in their coverage of materials that are older than what appears in most databases.

Altogether, this is a very nice resource for someone doing serious research on aspects of racism.

The New York Public Library African American Desk Reference

Published by John Wiley & Sons, on their Stonesong Press imprint, 1999.

Editorial credit to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

This is a high-quality hardbound book of 8" X 9.5", running 606 pages including the index, plus the table of contents and a foreword.

As a desk reference, the book is similar to an almanac, in that it compiles statistics, biographical information, directory information, chronologies and lists, and bibliographic information. Additionally, it has encyclopedic sections with articles about Black history, issues, culture, and intellectual currents.

The book is divided into 19 sections, each with a number of subsections. The 19 sections are:

1. The Saga of African American History
   
2. Slavery and Freedom
   
3. Politics and Civil Rights
   
4. The Diaspora
   
5. Family and Heritage
   
6. Religion
   
7. Education
   
8. Health
   
9. Business and Enterprise
   
10. Science and Technology
    
11. The Military
    
12. The Law
    
13. Literature and Language
    
14. Music
    
15. Performing Arts
    
16. Fine and Applied Arts
    
17. The Media
    
18. Sports
    
19. Resources
    

The index is 40 pages long and filled with proper names. Not only are the likes of Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks and Huey Newton included, but so are Spike Lee, Dr. Dre (Andrew Young), Father Divine, Teddy Pendergrass, Kirby Puckett, Gil Scott-Heron, Professor Longhair, Bobby Seals, Sun Ra, and of course hundreds of people I've never heard of. Also in the index are things like smoking; slave suicide; the Quaker condemnation of slavery; the Second Maroon War; samba; several sub-entries under Pulitzer Prize; kola nuts; Black Jews; literary societies; eight sub-entries under Gender; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Atonin Dvorák; Communism; Nok culture; 92nd Infantry Division; and several subentries under Physicians.

This is a very useful and informative book, good for looking up facts or for educating oneself in a very general, quick and superficial way about aspects of African American culture and history.