Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA, 1997. A look at the list of entries for the one-volume work indicates the manner in which Selin has proceeded. She has made it possible to search across the disciplines of a specific culture, as well as across cultures in a specific discipline. Non-Western to Selin, incidentally, is not a geographical distinction but a cultural one.
Entries range from very short biographical pieces to in-depth essays of several pages.
Both brief and extended essays have references attached for further information and cross-references are plentiful. An interesting approach has been taken by Selin in providing essays that serve as overviews of general topical areas such as medical ethics, maps and map making, physics and several others. These overviews would have been even more useful had they all been written from either the Western or non-Western point of view, but they are helpful nonetheless. The index is useful, although the mix of lower and upper case is sometimes distracting. Illustrations and photographs accompany many articles and are clear and well-presented.