Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, is America's most trusted reference tool. This "voice of authority" features over 214,000 definitions and 160,000 entries. To further enhance this reference tool, it also includes Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, with nearly 250,000 synonyms, antonyms, and idiomatic phrases, and the American Concise Encyclopedia, with more than 15,000 entries.
This encyclopedia comes at a time when the topics it addresses--among them Bullying and victimization, Cooperative learning, Learning styles, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and Reading interventions and strategies-- are at the forefront of American educational thought. Arranged A-Z, it contains more than 250 articles by 175 of the more influential school psychology scholars at all levels, from elementary school through university. A "Readers Guide" organizes the entries into categories such as "Demographic Variables," "Family and Parenting," "Multicultural Issues," and "Technology." The volume is extensively indexed, and the index is accurate, with well-placed cross-referencing. Each entry includes a list of cross-references to other entries along with references and other readings related to the topic...
British Political Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary
by Keith Laybourn (Editor)
Laybourn (history, Univ. of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England) has written many books on modern British political history (e.g., Modern Britain Since 1906). This tightly structured dictionary of political leaders begins with Walpole in 1721 and contains 366 entries, covering all prime ministers, chancellors of the exchequer, foreign and home secretaries up to Tony Blair's administration, and the four secretaries of state for the American Colonies. Family information is kept to a minimum; one learns from which seat the leader was elected and his or her political opinions and party and governmental roles but little family detail beyond the names of parents and spouses. Laybourn is mostly objective. The rise and fall of political parties and of British fortunes are reflected through the (generally) men in charge of the empire on which the sun once never set. Modern leaders get a little more ink than their predecessors. Perhaps too dry for public libraries but recommended for academic libraries, where the relatively short entries would best serve undergraduates. Robert Moore, Parexel, Waltham, MA
This volume offers serious Anglophiles 198 entries covering the British leaders who filled "the top four offices of state and the post of secretary of state for the colonies between 1730 and the present," the four top offices being prime minister, chancellor of the exchequer, foreign secretary, and home secretary. Arrangement of entries is alphabetical, either by name or by title depending on how the individual was best known. For example, Benjamin Disraeli is listed under his given name, not as the Earl of Beaconsfield. In cases where official titles have evolved over the centuries, the editors have, for the sake of consistency, used the modern title. Thus, all prime ministers are listed as such, even though the post was once referred to as First Lord of the Treasury.
Based on the text of Margaret Drabble's 1995 edition, this sixth edition has been completely reworked and expanded. There are nearly 600 entirely new entries to reflect the new figures and issues of English Literature in the new millennium, and the existing entries have been extensively revised and updated to incorporate the latest scholarship. But this new edition remains faithful to Sir Paul Harvey's original vision of an authoritative work placing English literature from the Classical world, Europe, Latin America, and beyond. In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured essay-style entries on key topics.
The Encyclopedia includes 253 alphabetically arranged entries written by 170 authors. The text is supplemented with more than 600 photographs, illustrations, sidebars, and maps. Entries contain a set of cross-references to related entries within the set, as well as a bibliography of related books and journal articles to guide readers who want to learn more about a given topic. The front matter in Volume 1 includes a list of entry topics, and the back matter in Volume 3 contains both an extensive timeline of important dates in energy history and a comprehensive subject index.
