Fans of Bob Dylan have a multitude of choices when it comes to biographies and retrospectives, but author Michael Gray outdistances them all with this voluminous collection of all things Dylan.
Over the course of 823 pages Gray considers everything from railroad imagery in Dylan's songs to his use of nursery rhymes, covering the topics thoughtfully and thoroughly.
While Gray is certainly a fan, it's this impartiality that fuels the book and gives it weight. Insightful and entertaining, Gray's tome will broaden appreciation of the artist, his influences and his legacy.
Gray offers a detailed volume featuring entries related to Dylan's life, artists who influenced him and were influenced by him, musical styles he created, and background stories of specific Dylan songs and recordings.
Most of the entries are sketches of musicians, although Gray includes actors, authors, and other nonmusicians. These entries provide brief biographies and then explain how the people are connected to Dylan: how they worked with him, influenced or were influenced by him, and which of his songs they performed or recorded.
This makes for unique entries, such as Interviews and the myth of their rarity (in which he claims Dylan actually averaged one interview per month over 40 years) and Dylan being "bored" by his acoustic material 1965-66, the myth of. In fact, the entire book is written in a refreshingly relaxed manner, as befits a music critic and fan.
This new encyclopedia from Macmillan offers another option in the popular field of death reference works. The 327 signed entries, written by scholars and expert care providers, range in length from a few paragraphs to several pages. The focus of the entries is on exploring "the place of death in contemporary life," although the encyclopedia also aims to provide a historical perspective of death and dying through the ages. Types of entries include causes of death (Assassination, Cancer, Drowning); practices surrounding death (Cryonic suspension, Pyramids, Sympathy cards); individuals and events that have influenced the way we think about death.
The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Finance by Dean Paxson and Douglas Wood
Book Description The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Finance provides clear, concise, up to the minute and highly informative definitions and explanations of the key concepts covering the whole of the fast changing field of contemporary finance. Bringing together specially commissioned and carefully edited entries from an international team of the world's best known and respected finance scholars and teachers, this will become the standard reference for students, researchers, academics and practitioners.
The Dictionary has been carefully designed to give both the expert and the newcomer overviews and succinct presentations of the most important concepts, terms and techniques in modern finance. With entries ranging from extended explorations of major topics to short definitions of key terms, this major reference work gives the user: Authoritative and comprehensive coverage of the whole field.A fully indexed and cross-referenced for detailed research with relevant citations for further study.Definitive entries covering the very latest development in finance.A completely international perspective and author base. This dictionary is part of the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management which contains ten further volumes covering each of the key areas of management science developed under the editorship of Professor Cary Cooper from the Manchester School of Management and Professor Chris Argyris of Harvard Business School. (amazon.com)
With more entries than any other reference of its kind, McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs shows you how American English is spoken today. You will find commonly used phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions, proverbial expressions, and clichйs. The dictionary contains more than 24,000 entries, each defined and followed by one or two example sentences. It also includes a Phrase-Finder Index with more than 60,000 entries.
The book explains all the important sociologicalterms, theories, concepts and proper names, whether they come from theclassic nineteenth-century traditions or from recent radical trends,from the realms of abstract theory to issues of immediate socialconcern. There are over 2000 entries, arranged in alphabetical order.All entries start with simple concise definitions but many go on toprovide full-length original essays. Thisclassic reference has been updated to reflect the many changes insociety and in the field of sociology in recent years. Articlescovering core issues such as race, poverty, violence, economics,pregnancy and abortion have been updated and expanded, and completelynew articles have been written on topics such as the Internet, privacy,and epidemiology.