Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience (5 Volume Set)
Starred Review.Grade 9 Up–Thoroughly revised and massively expanded, this monumental work not only serves as a replacement for its 1999 edition, but also merits a place in any academically oriented high school or college collection. Alphabetically arranged but backed up by both a detailed index and a topical list of headers in the final volume, the nearly 4500 entries delve into both African and African-American history, from wide-angled studies of Slavery in Africa and Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Interpretation, to close-focus mentions of Malcom X's Aardvark references and major Zydeco musicians. Most articles are signed and close with see-also references. Illustrations are uncommon but well chosen, a blend of clearly designed maps, charts, and graphs, and sharply reproduced prints or color photos. Though approximately 175 of the biographical entries have been drawn from theAmerican National Biography(Oxford Univ, 2005), none of the resource lists include Web sites, and some details are dated–a table of African-American Academy Award winners ends with 2002, for instance, and the set's introductory chronology stops at mid-2004. However, students seeking information about African music, insight into the failure of school desegregation in the U.S. or the significance of Curt Flood's challenge to baseball's reserve clause, background on the history of colonialism, or hundreds of other historical topics will find both facts and ideas in plenty here.–John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.