Reviews
This set combines and updates entries from Magill's Great Events from History: American Series (Salem, 1975) and Great Events from History: Worldwide Twentieth Century Series (Salem, 1980). It contains 325 new articles to provide coverage of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean; as well as extended coverage of Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos. In addition, 340 articles have been updated.
Each of the four volumes covers a specific time period, beginning with 15,000 B.C. and extending through 1996. In typical Magill fashion, each article begins with ready-reference information, including year, location, categories (for example, Canadian history, exploration and discovery), and principal personages. This is followed by a summary of the event, a brief annotated list of suggested readings, and see also references. An added feature of this edition is a brief descriptive phrase appended to the title of the event, which reflects the significance of the event as it relates to North American history; for example: "Africans Arrive in Virginia: the beginnings of slavery in the British colonies."
Written or updated by academicians from such fields as history, political science, and economics, each article contains a summary of the event, ranging in length from 1,000 to 1,200 words. Fifty-six maps are included and dispersed throughout the set. In contrast to the earlier sets, there are two additional decades of history, covering the election of Jimmy Carter as President with only a 2% popular vote margin, the reporting of the first AIDS cases, changes in people's views of sexual behaviors, and the rise of a revolutionary communications network, the Internet.
Although the print is small, the overall physical format makes the task of finding information fairly simple. Each volume has a chronological contents list at the beginning, and a Key Word Index and Category List for all four volumes at the end. The Category List groups articles under 31 different categories, such as "Health and Medicine," and "Latino History." Three additional reference aids are found in the end of Volume IV: a time line, which lists in chronological order all events included in the four volumes; a personages index, and a subject index.
While many resources exist on these events, the vocabulary, simple explanation of events in chronological order, and the way this set shows interrelationships between people and events make it a useful tool for providing high-school students and college undergraduates with the necessary background information to begin research.
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