referencebooks

Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Compiled and Edited by Kathryn A. Bard

Published by Routledge, 1999

This is a chunky, 7" by 10" black clothbound book running to 938 pages including a glossary, an index, and an 80-page section of introductory essays, plus a long preferatory section.

This book has a little over 300 entries on the archaeology of ancient Egypt that discuss important sites, aspects of their society and culture, archaeology, famous Egyptologists, buildings, and geographical features.

The entries are really encyclopedic in length and are efficiently written - densely packed with facts. Each entry finishes with a few see also references and a few references to further readings. Here is the full list of entries in the "N" sequence:

• Naga ed-Deir
  
• Nagada (Naqada)
  
• Napoleon Bonaparte and the Napoleonic expedition
  
• natural resources
  
• Naukratis
  
• Neolithic and Predynastic stone tools
  
• Nile, flood history
  
• Nile, modern hydrology
  
• Nile Valley, geologic evolution
  
• nome structure
  
• Nubian forts
  
• Nubian towns and temples
  
• Nuri
  

Typical of a Routledge reference book, this one is authoritative and very thorough. An essential resource to support the study of ancient Egypt and Egyptology.

National Anthems of the World, Seventh Edition

Edited by W. L. Reed and M. J. Bristow

Published by Blandford Press, 1987.

This is a 7" by 10" clothbound book running to 513 pages including a list at the end of national days (like our Independence Day) for each country.

What this book is is very simple: it's a compilation of the musical scores, lyrics (transliterated into the Latin alphabet when necessary), and translations into English of all of the world's national anthems. It also provides the names of the composers and lyricists, information about the songs' official adoption, and, where applicable, the songs' titles. That makes it a very useful and interesting book that doesn't have a lot of opportunities to go wrong. The main drawback of our edition is that it is so old. There have been many political changes since 1987 that would result in necessary updates to the book. The latest edition is the tenth, published in 2002; ours is far behind, I suppose because it has not been often-enough used to purchase an update.

This is a really neat book.

An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003

By Amy K. Glasmeier

Published by Routledge, 2006

This is a slick, full color coffeetable paperback measuring 12" by 9" (landscape format) and running to 97 pages including the index, plus a preferatory section and a CD-ROM. The pages are thick and slick and the printing is high-quality. The borders in the layout of this book are extremely narrow.

The introductory section of the book discusses in detail, among other things, statistical and conceptual issues involved in data relating to poverty. It is a good thing when a data book that is easy to use includes a discussion of methodology. The data used in the atlas come from "hundreds of publications, groups, and individuals who study the various themes.."

The book is divided into four major section: "Lived Experiences," "History of Poverty," "Distressed Regions," and "History of Poverty Policy." In the "Lived Experiences" section are such sub-sections as "Black Families at Risk," "Black Male Incarceration," "Hard Work and Low Pay Define the Lives of Hispanic Americans," "Elderly," and "Working But Poor." The "History of Poverty" section devotes a few pages to each decade from the 60's to the present. The "Distressed Regions" section focuses on U.S. regions where poverty is extremely widespread (Appalachia, The Mississippi Delta, Indian Reservations, The Border Region, etc.). The section on the history of American poverty policy is the briefest section.

The maps are mostly about 6" by 3.5" in size. They use color effectively to highlight information without distracting from it. The book communicates its information clearly and is easy to use. The methodology behind the information is also given a very sufficient discussion. The combination of those qualities makes it a good reference book for getting a geographic picture of poverty in the U.S.

A Dictionary of Landscape: A Dictionary of Terms Used in the Description of the World's Land Surfaces

By George A. Goulty

Published by Avebury Technical, 1991.

This is a 6" by 9" clothbound book running to 309 pages plus a two page preface. It is printed using a monospaced typewriter font, in the way short-run specialty academic books were often published before the personal computing revolution.

The preface says, "The purpose of this dictionary [...] is to give definitions of terms that are important to all those concerned or interested with (sic) the land surface of this planet. It is a dictionary of technical terms written partly for specialists, but more particularly for the technically minded person and for students." The book includes definitions of terms relating to landscape that come from aboriculture, agriculture, architecture, biology, building construction, forestry, geology, geography, horticulture, urban planning, and many other fields.

For a sense of what is included, here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "W" sequence:

• WADI
  
• WAKE-DUNE
  
• WALDHUFENDORF
  
• WALDSTERBEN
  
• WALLACE'S LINE
  
• WALTHAM CHASE MEADOW, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
  
• WANING SLOPES
  
• WAPENTAKE
  
• WARD
  
• WARPING
  
• WARPLAND, WARPLANDS
  
• WARREN
  
• WASH
  
• WASHLAND
  
• WASTE, WASTELAND
  

Definitions are given usually in a few lines of easy-to-understand and sometimes entertaining text. There is attention to words that come from an American context, but the book is basically British.

Here are a few sample definitions:

INTROVERT GARDEN     A garden design that ignores or screens everything beyond the boundary of the garden, and concentrates on creating features of visual interest within the site. Opposite to extravert garden.

HERMITAGE     The habitation of a hermit; a solitary dwelling place for meditation. It became fashionable in Britain in the 18th century to build hermitages as a garden feature of interest; but it was difficult to find sufficient hermits to occupy them. Some of the best known hermitages were at Stowe, Buckinghamshire; Painshill, Surrey; and Stourhead in Wiltshire, England.

DUMPLING     The soil remaining in the centre of an open excavation which is commenced by the sinking of a trench around the site. The dumpling is removed later.

LIDO     A beach of sand or silt in front of a shore lagoon. The best known example is the lido which protects the lagoon at Venice. This has been converted into a famous bathing beach, so that the word lido has now come to mean a bathing beach; even at fresh water and artificial lake resorts.

This is a handy book if you're studying geography or landscape architecture and can compensate for the British perspective.

Places Rated Almanac, Millenium Edition

By David Savageau with Ralph D'Agostino

Published by IDG Books Worldwide, 2000.

This is a big paperback book measuring 8.5" by 11" and running to 676 pages including the indices and appendices.

Like most mass-market reference book, this one has heavy advertising on the front and back covers to tell you why you should buy the book (what you will find inside). So, without opening the book we know that it ranks 354 metropolitan areas in the US and Canada for living costs, transportation, jobs, education, climate, crime, the arts, health care, and recreation, as well as providing some data on politics, diversity, and wealth.

The authors made the interesting decision to organize the book by topic rather than by geography. So instead of having a section for each metropolitan area the book is divided into sections by topic of comparison (health care, cost of living, jobs, etc.) This makes it easy to compare places based on some specific critera but doesn't provide a way to get a range of info on a specific place. This represents a weakness of this print source, and print sources in general, as compared to online sources, which can present the same data organized in different ways easily. Reference books usually deal with this problem by providing indexes that refer to the relevant locations in the text according to a different organizational scheme. This book has a shocking defect in that there are no references from the lists of metropolitan areas in the back (which present some other info) to the places in the text that give the data about them in the different areas of comparison, which means that there is no way to use this book to research the merits of a specific place. Given that most people already have a few places at mind when they are facing decisions about where to live, this book is bound to be frustrating to most people who pick it up.

The actual data in the book is not bad, and comes from a wide range of government and private sources, which are all credited. However, good data is also not hard to find in online sources that are more convenient to use. This book has a little bit more discussion and analysis, but is unfortunately useless as a reference for information on specific locations. Not recommended.

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.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago

Edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff. Cartographic Editor Michael P. Conzen.

Published by The University of Chicago Press, 2004.

This is a beautifully printed clothbound book measuring 9" by 12" and running to 1117 pages including the index and appendices, plus 31 pages of preferatory material.

This book is a tour de force of reference information on the city of Chicago and its history.

Here is a list of the first twenty entries in the A-Z section:

• Abolitionism
  
• Accounting
  
• Acting, Ensemble
  
• Addison, IL
  
• Adler Planetarium
  
• Advertising
  
• Afghans
  
• African Americans
  
• Agrarian Movements
  
• Agricultural Journals
  
• Agricultural Machinery Industry
  
• Agriculture
  
• AIDS
  
• Air Quality
  
• Airlines
  
• Airports, Commuter
  
• Albanians
  
• Albany Park
  
• Aldermanic Privilege
  
• Algerians
  

The entries listed above take us from page one to page fourteen of the book.

The book is laid out in three columns per page. Entries typically give a succinct historical account of its subject with some interesting detail in language that is clear and interesting, ending with with an author's signature, "see also" references, and a brief bibliography of for further reading. Included with many entries are small illustrations and black and white photographs. Interspersed throughout the A-Z section are 46 full-page maps. The center of the book has a good-sized section of color plates and text describing and illustrating a timeline of Chicago's history. There are two other sections of color inserts - one containing some of the maps and the other showing pictures of murals and other public art. The appendices include a "Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses, 1820-2000," a biographical dictionary of Chicago figures, a list of Chicago mayors, a section of tables showing the population figures for Chicago area neighborhoods, suburbs and counties in different time periods, a list of credits, and map sources.

This is a very fine reference work about Chicago, the definitive work.

Women in the Third World: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues

Nelly P. Stromquist, Editor.

Published by Garland, 1998.

This is a 9" by 12" hardbound book running to 684 pages including an annotated bibliography, appendices, and the index, plus a preface and a good-sized introduction.

After spending twelve paragraphs explaining the use of the expression "Third World" in the title, the introduction states that the encyclopedia "seeks to provide a feminist perspective on issues involved in socioeconomic development of Third World countries."

The book presents 66 articles on topics relating to Third World women, in ten sections. The sections headings are:

1. Conceptual and Theoretical Issues
   
2. Political and Legal Topics
   
3. Sex-Role Ideologies
   
4. Demographics and Health
   
5. Marriage and the Family
   
6. Women and Production
   
7. Women and the Environment
   
8. Enabling Conditions for Change
   
9. Movements for Change
   
10. Geograhical Entries
    

Here is a sampling of the article titles:

• Women in India
  
• Women in Contemporary Cuba
  
• Girls and International Development
  
• The Explicit and the Hidden School Curriculum
  
• Women and Environmental Activism
  
• Women's Labor Incomes
  
• Women's Experiences as Small-Scale Entrepreneurs
  
• Women in the City
  
• Lives of Middle-Aged Women
  
• Modernity and the Mass Media
  
• Women and Contraception
  
• Women and War
  

Each article is signed by a recognized scholar and engages its topic thoroughly, providing a sophisticated analysis and a rich factual portrait in such a way that readers new to concepts in feminist social theory will not be left behind, while serious researchers will find much that is new and informative.

This is a unique reference work and one that does a very good job with its subject matter.

World Monetary Units: An Historical Dictionary, Country by Country

By Howard M. Berlin

Published by McFarland, 2005

This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 229 pages including a series of appendices, a bibliography and an index, plus a brief preface and a "how to use this book" section.

The book has entries of a half a page to just over a page covering the monetary units of each country in the world. Each entry gives a brief history of the country's monetary units, finishing with tables laying out the chronology of their development and the orthography of the country's currency (the formation of words, abbreviations and symbols representing the monetary denominations). Economic facts about a country's money system and its history are not covered; the book is limited to information about monetary units.

The detail is quite impressive given the brevity of the entries. For example, the entry on Uzbekistan's currency provides a note showing the difference between the Uzbek/Uigur spellings of the denominational units "som" and "tiyin" and the Kyrgyz spellings, in the Cyrillic alphabet.

This book provides a thorough coverage of this limited topic into a efficient, relatively small package. A well done, useful reference book.

The Canadian Atlas: Our Nation, Environment and People

Published by Reader's Digest Canada and Canadian Geographic, 2004.

This is a hardbound book measuring 10.5" by 14.5" and running to 192 full-color pages including the index.

Extremely clear and legible maps and an extensive section on Canada's physical geography are what distinguish this basic atlas of the country.

The first part of the book, making up around 30 pages, is all about the physical geography of Canada, focusing separately on each geographic region. Then there are brief sections on native peoples and settlements by Europeans, followed by the maps, which make up most of the book. Thirteen pages of maps cover the Province of Ontario, not including pages for city maps. For each map there is a sidebar highlighting geographic facts and points of interest. City maps include cities as small as Whitehorse, YT (admittedly a 4.5" square map) and provide useful street information.

This is a fine atlas for those needing information on Canada's geography.

Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2004

Compiled by the Treaty Affairs Staff, Office of the Legal Adviser, Department of State.

Published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

This is a bright yellow paperback book measuring 8.5" by 11" and running to 531 pages.

The title page states,

This publication lists treaties and other international agreements of the United States on record in the Department of State on January 1, 2004 which had not expired by their terms or which had not been denounced by the parties, replaced or superseded by other agreements, or otherwise definitely terminated.

The book (which is an annual publication) is arranged in two major parts, plus an appendix. The first part lists bilateral treaties and agreements, and the second part lists multilateral treaties and agreements. The appendix tabulates documents affecting international copyright relations of the U.S., including treaties and also proclamations. For each country that has a copyright treaty or agreement with the U.S. there is a "see" reference from the topic of copyright to this appendix.

Each of the two parts has sections for each country in the world alphabetically. Under each country there are headings for subject areas covered by treaties (Mapping, Meteorological Research, Military Cemeteries and Monuments, Mutual Security, Narcotic Drugs, Occupied Territory, and Oceanography are examples of subjects of treaties between the U.S. and the United Kingdom). For each subject covered there are one or more treaties listed. A treaty citation looks like this:

Agreement providing for a meteorological research program in Barbados. Exchange of notes at Bridgetown January 7 and 15, 1963; entered into force January 15, 1963.
14 UST 109; TIAS 5276; 466 UNTS 181

That's a treaty between the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

This is an extremely important reference book, since treaties and agreements form the basis of international law, which is playing a greater role in people's lives as the world becomes more globalized. Ideally it would be an online resource with simple hyperlinks directly to the actual treaties. Some things are too obvious to do right away.

Unique Games and Sports Around the World: A Reference Guide

Edited by Doris Corbett, John Cheffers, and Eileen Crowley Sullivan.

Published by Greenwood Press, 2001.

This is a 6.5" by 9.5" hardbound book running to 407 pages including the bibliography and indexes, plus an introduction.

Most reference books about sports and games provide either rules and instructions for play or historical statistics. This one is different, because it looks at sports in a geographical, anthropological and sociological way.

Most of the book is a country-by-country look at sports and games as they are played in different cultures, especially if the games are unique to a given culture. The majority of the games included are children's and teenager's games that might be played in a schoolyard; interestingly, these are the most confined to specific cultures and countries.

Opening the book at random, I'm in the section for Norway, which lists only one game that is specific to that country, a game whose name is translated into English as "Together Save." Like all the entries in the book, this one gives a statement of who plays the game, the object for players, the number of players, clothing and equipment required, the type of space it is played in, how the end of the game is determined, the symbolism or point of the game, and the rules of play including scoring. This particular game is a good example of what is interesting about the book, because it is quite different from schoolyard games played in the United States. The object of the game is to get all of the players securely aboard a wooden crate or a square piece of wood. Instead of competing to push each other off and be "king of the mountain," players cooperate so that everybody can stay on. As the book states, this game "[r]epresents the need for organization, leadership, and trust in the face of disaster." It is also clearly a game that reinforces in children the values of a more socialist society (as Norway certainly is).

An interesting feature of the book is that for each game, there is a statement of whether the game is "suitable for replication," presumably by teachers for their students. Chinese cockfighting is not suitable for replication, and "Together Save" is.

This is a really interesting book, useful in studying other cultures or as a source of unique and educational play activities for recreation teachers.

Dictionary of Global Climate Change

Compiled by W. John Maunder as a contribution of the Stockholm Environment Institute to the Second World Climate Conference.

Published by Chapman & Hall, 1992.

This is a 6" by 9" clothbound book running to 240 pages plus a foreword, preface, acknowledgments, list of sources, and abbreviations and acronyms.

A straightforward dictionary of terms relating to the study of climate change, this modest-sized book does a good job of communicating its subject matter in somewhat dense but clear and jargon-free prose. For a sense of what it covers, here are the first fifteen items in the "D" sequence, not including "See" references:

• D-layer
  
• daily (diurnal) range of temperatures
  
• daily maximum/minimum temperatures
  
• data processing
  
• Data Rescue Programme (DARE)
  
• deforestation
  
• deforestation and reforestation (IPCC WG I: Policymaker's Summary)
  
• degree days
  
• dendrochronology
  
• denudation
  
• desert
  
• desertification
  
• detection of the human-induced greenhouse effect on global mean temperatures
  
• deterministic model
  
• deterministic system
  

Entries range in length from one sentence to about a page, with most entries coming in on the shorter end. Here is a sample:

hypsithermal period
The period about 4,000 to 8,000 years ago when the Earth was apparently a few degrees warmer than it is now. More rainfall occurred in most of the subtropical desert regions and less in the central Midwest United States and Scandinavia. It is also called the "altithermal period" and could serve as a past climate analogue for predicting the regional pattern of climate change should the mean Earth-surface temperature increase as a result of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.

This is an informative book, useful for people in the field or as an interesting introduction to the study of climate change.

Names and Nicknames of Places & Things

Edited by Laurence Urdang.

Published by G.K. Hall & Co., 1985.

This is a 6.5" by 9.5" clothbound book running to 327 pages including the geographic and subject index, plus a very brief foreword.

The title leaves out the word "dictionary;" what the book is is a dictionary of names and nicknames of places and things, with entries ranging in length from a few words to about a page, describing things or places arranged by their nicknames or other informal names. The author acknowledges the book's incompleteness and cultural bias, which unfortunately seems a little extreme.

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

• M & S
  
• MacDowell Colony
  
• Macy's
  
• Madison Avenue
  
• Madison Square Garden
  
• Maelstrom, the
  
• Mae West
  
• Mafeking
  
• Maghreb
  
• Magic Valley
  
• Magnificent Mile, the
  
• Magnolia City
  
• Magnolia State, the
  
• magpie houses
  
• Maida Vale
  

Here are a couple of samples:

Strawberry Fields
A Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool, in the Northwest of England, immortalized in the Beatles song of the same name, which they first recorded in 1967.

Wigan
A town near Manchester, England. Situated in a coal-mining area, Wigan is associated in the minds of the British with the ordinary man-in-the-street, a typically unthinking person representative of the unthinking masses. Music-hall comedians are wont to refer to performances at "Wigan Pier," and that apocryphal place is retained in the title of the book, The Road to Wigan Pier, by George Orwell.

This is a useful book for looking up the meaning and story behind many British and WASP-y American nicknames of places and things.

Rand McNally Atlas of the Oceans

By John Pernetta.

Published by Rand McNally, 1994.

This is a 9" by 12" clothbound book running to 208 pages including the appendices and index.

The book is divided into six major sections (notes in parentheses are examples of topics addressed in each section):

• The Oceans (incl. continental drift, eroding shores, ocean chemistry, ocean layers, tides, currents, etc.)
  
• Ocean Exploration (first explorations, science of ocean exploration, submersibles, maritime law)
  
• Ocean Life (plankton, feeding, predators and prey, reproduction, locomotion, birdlife, vertical distribution, etc.)
  
• Ocean Resources (artisanal and commercial fishing, mariculture, offshore and deep-sea minerals, oil and gas, pollution, etc.)
  
• Ocean Atlas (specific oceans and seas)
  
• Encyclopedia of Marine Life (alphabetically organized)
  

The book is heavily illustrated, not only with maps but with reproductions of art representing people, ships, sea life, and other aspects of the oceans; photographs, and charts and diagrams, most in full color.

The text is written clearly and informatively in the dry but not-difficult-to-read style of a textbook, and presents a wealth of solid information relating to the world's oceans.

Though not a huge atlas, it is a high-quality and useful one.

The Handbook of Country Risk 2003: A Guide to International Business and Trade

By Coface (a business consulting firm).

Published by Kogan Page Ltd., 2003.

This is a 7" by 10" clothbound book running to 395 pages, plus a preface and an introduction.

The book is intended for businesspeople involved in global trade and foreign investment, to give them quick information on the riskiness of the business climate in different countries.

For each country, we get a map showing its location in its area of the world, a "Coface analysis" number summarizing its short and long term risk, a list of the country's "strengths and weaknesses" from the point of view of an investor or trader, a couple of paragraphs on the risk assessment of that country describing its economic and political issues, a table of economic indicators, summaries of the situation in various economic sectors, and a summary of the "payment and collection practices" there.

This book is an illustrative example of how an information resource can contain lots of objective information at the same time it is highly ideological. The facts and figures in the book are objective and useful, but it is all working from the point of view of global capitalism. Therefore, "slowness in privatization" is always presented as a "weakness," and a strong public sector means that "reforms are still needed."

The ideological bias of the book is problematic from an academic standpoint, but the book is intended for practical uses, and is aimed at an audience that shares its ideology.

Exactly how practical the book is is questionable. It does a good job of summarizing country information relevant to global trade, but if I imagine myself in the shoes of a capitalist considering building a factory in Hungary, as busy as I am doing business things, I think that three pages of information would not be sufficient for my needs. But perhaps there are situations when a global capitalist needs this type of country-by-country breakdown. Our business students might find it useful in their studies about global trade.

Rivers of the World: A Social, Geographical, and Environmental Sourcebook

By James R. Penn

Published by ABC-CLIO, 2001.

This book measures 7" by 10" and runs to 355 pages including the glossary, bibliography, and index, plus a preface, introduction, and a section of maps.

The author states in his introduction:

This encyclopedia consists of 192 alphabetically arranged entries ranging from 250 words to 2,100 words. It has been my aim to make the contents of the entries as thoroughly researched, vividly written, and clearly organized as possible. I attempted to provide a comprehensive treatment of the rivers of the world--large and small--from the River Aare in Switzerland to Africa's Ziz, with an eye toward revealing the physical, economical, political, and environmental character of the world's alluvial landscapes and regions.

Opening the book at random I find myself at the start of the entry for the Sacramento River. It begins with a few lines stating the location of its source, its length, its tributaries, and its outlet, and then goes on to describe, in really enjoyable and entertaining prose the geography of the river and its surroundings and the role and use of the river in the lives of local people throughout history. The entry finishes, on its third page, with a paragraph about environmental problems affecting the river, followed by a "see also" reference to the San Joaquin river, a reference for further reading, and a reference to a website having to do with water treatment issues in the area. The entry is illustrated with two photographs, one of some land along a subtributary of the river that shows evidence of gold mining, and the other of a covered bridge along a tributary in the Gold Country.

For a book with this title, there is a surprising amoung of social history included in the entries. Reading the entries requires little to no background knowledge of geography. The writing is anything but "dry." The glossary provides all the necessary background where it is needed.

This is a useful and enjoyable reference book.

International Boundaries: A Geopolitical Atlas

By Ewan W. Anderson.

Published by Routledge, 2003.

This is a heavy, 7.5" by 10" hardbound book running to 941 pages including the main section and the index, plus a preface; list of abbreviations and acronyms; a key for statistics; an introduction; a key to the maps; and some regional maps, all on slick, high-quality paper.

The main function of the book is to spell out the current status and history of the borders of every country in the world. Opening the book at random, I am at entry #73, for Guyana. (The political "long form" of country names, in this case "Co-operative Republic of Guyana," is not given anywhere.) The entry for Guyana is three and a half pages long, one page of which is a gray-scale map. The entry briefly describes Guyana's geographic setting, and then talks about its land boundaries with other countries, including a list of legal settlements with its neighboring countries, verbal descriptions of its borders, and some data for each border, including "approximate boundary accordance with topographical features," "potential geographical accessibility," "potential political instability," and something called "Geopolitical index." In addition, we get information about maritime boundaries, a list of recent incidents (none listed for Guyana), information about paramilitaries (a number high enough that it seems to represent employees in all branches of the military), information about trade, natural resources, data on the "RUSI Index of Martial Potency," and national land boundary vulnerability data.

The descriptive text is very dry and objective. Boundaries are defined by summarizing agreements that have been signed by countries and their neighbors, or left in "unsettled" status where no clear agreement exists (as with the border between India and China). I'm not sure how to judge the statistical information that's provided.

I was curious to see how the book treats the boundaries between Israel and the Occupied Territories. There is no entry for Palestine, but there are separate entries, in the regular sequence of countries, for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Other national movements aren't given the same status for their territories, however, which is understandable given their number; an arbitrary line has to be drawn.

This is a very nice compilation of hard facts, useful for people studying international politics.

United States Immigration: A Reference Handbook

By E. Willard Miller and Ruby M. Miller.

Published by ABC-CLIO in their Contemporary World Issues series, 1996.

This is a 6" by 9" hardbound book running to 305 pages plus a brief preface.

This book aims to provide a full complement of reference information on U.S. immigration, including statics, information about policy and law, chronologies, bibliographies (including audiovisual resources), historical trends, directory information, and a glossary. The information is presented in chapters, subchapters, and bite-sized sub-subchapters, with some data tables in the mix.

The six chapters (with subchapters in parentheses) are:

1. Immigration: A Perspective (Roots of Immigration; U.S. Immigration Policy; Immigration Trends; Illegal Immigration; Migrants; Refugees; Immigration out of the United States; Impact of Immigration; References)
   
2. Chronology (Laws and Regulations; Legislative Process Leading to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Chronology of Refugee Admissions; Illegal Immigration)
   
3. Laws and Regulations (Immigration; Naturalization; Refugees; Special Legislation)
   
4. Directory of Organizations (Immigration; Migration; Migrant Workers; Refugees; Organizational Sources)
   
5. Bibliography (Reference Sources; Books; Journal Articles and Government Documents; Selected Journal Titles)
   
6. Audiovisual Aids (Immigration; Immigration Legislation; Immigrants; Aliens; Migrant Labor; Refugees; Regional Immigration)
   

The information presented is quite objective and factual. I am always looking for a lack of objectivity in reference books, and thought I had spotted it in the table of contents to this one. In the first chapter section on Refugees, the sub-subchapters listed are Hungary, Cuba and Vietnam - and that's it. Aren't there a lot of Palestinian refugees in the U.S.? Aren't there a lot of refugees from Central and South American dictatorships? Turning to that subchapter, our explanation is right in the first sentence: "As a result of U.S. criteria concerning which immigrants can be classified as refugees, nearly all the refugees who have entered the United States since the 1940's have been from communist countries (Table 15)." It was thoughtful of the authors, in my opinion, to provide this explanation right up front, and state that they are using the U.S. government definition of a refugee in the data that they present.

I would say that this is a handy and reliable guide to factual information about U.S. immigration.

Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture

By Dorothy Perkins.

Published by Facts On File, on their Roundtable Press imprint, 1999.

This is a hardbound book measuring 9" by 11" and running to 662 pages including the bibliography and index, plus an introduction.

China, as the world's most populous country and one of its oldest cultures, ought to have inspired us to create a much more voluminous encyclopedic work than this single volume, and maybe it has, but this is the best our library has to show. Given that television and movies are the U.S.A.'s biggest export product, China knows a lot more about us than we know about it, which the Chinese know well ultimately works to their advantage in what may be a contest of the ages. This work represents a broad cross section of entries on all aspects of the history and culture of this tremendously important country. Covered are "major cities and provinces; geography and climate; animals, birds, vegetation; historical eras and figures, recent and contemporary; government and politics; business and economics; religion -- sects, leaders, temles, festivals; language and writing system; literature; fine arts; crafts and architecture; family structure; food and customs; daily life and popular culture; sports and martial arts; important Chinese figures outside of mainland China, and important Westerners in China."

The first twenty entries in the "C" sequence are:

• CAAC
  
• CADRE
  
• CAI
  
• CAI YUANPEI
  
• CAIGUO
  
• CAIRO CONFERENCE
  
• CALENDAR
  
• CALLIGRAPHY
  
• CAMBULAC
  
• CAMEL CARAVANS
  
• CAMELLIA
  
• CAMPHOR WOOD
  
• CANALS
  
• CANTON
  
• CANTON OPERA
  
• CANTON SYSTEM
  
• CAO CAO
  
• CAO FAMILY OF ROYAL POETS
  
• CAO GUO JIU
  
• CAO WEI FU ZI
  

Many of these are "See" references. Some "See" references in the book are from a spelling in one system of romanization to another. The pinyin system of romanization is the one mainly used by the book, since it is the system used by China, but Wade-Giles spellings are also used in cases of terms and names that are commonly known in the West by their Wade-Giles spellings (such as Chiang Kai-shek). For names, the East Asian order of family name first is used, except for overseas Chinese, whose names are given in the Western manner, with the last name first, separated by a comma (e.g. Tan, Amy; Pei, I. M.).

Because, like most of us, my knowledge of China is not what it should be, it is difficult for me to judge this book. It seems to be a good basic reference. I only wish it were about ten volumes larger.

Anybody know of a more complete Encyclopedia of China?