Rating: 
Summary: the Colombia Encyclopedia
Review: This book never ceases to amaze me. It has information that one would never dare to hope would be there and it is written with such originality and brilliance. How I wish I had discovered it years ago.
Rating:
Summary: the Colombia Encyclopedia
Review: This book never ceases to amaze me. It has information that one would never dare to hope would be there and it is written with such originality and brilliance. How I wish I had discovered it years ago.
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Information Gem
Review: This is a wonderful reference book. The information is superbly presented. Where the entry might be unfamiliar it provides a pronunciation key (exceptionally convenient for foreign or archaic words). The entries themselves are well balanced for readability, content, and completeness. And most articles include a bibliography if you wish to research further.It is also a reference in which you can get delightfully lost. My searches take me in many directions. It's first class cross-referencing makes an in-depth investigation a snap, but sometimes it is better to ramble. And this is the beauty of the book, unlike structured links with Web or CD encyclopedias, in the Columbia Encyclopedia the links are only encumbered by your imagination and curiosity. If you are not American, (I'm Canadian) don't worry about obsessive jingoism that often pervades American efforts. The Columbia presentation is evenhanded and globally egalitarian in scope and breadth. If you don't already own this excellent volume it should be on your bookshelf. If you are a teacher it should be in both the school library and your classroom (grades 6-12), and if you are a parent it should be in your home. The Columbia Encyclopedia is truly a rare and valuable information jewel.
Rating: 
Summary: Still great, some datedness
Review: This my second version Columbia Encyclopedia and the new edition deserves much the same praise as the old one did.
The amazing thing about this encyclopedia is I often prefer it to my Britannica CD (or the online service). It's faster, more to the point, and has a surprising number of very clear and helpful illustrations and charts (all the Supreme Court Justices and their dates, p. 2754; a schematic for an iron blast furnace, p. 323). It's also a great gazetteer (Inuvik - Northwest Territories Candada, pop. 8,491, with a whole darn paragraph on the place!). The only downside is that as impressive as this thing is, it has to be brief. Only 2 sentences on King Khufu of Egypt, for example, seems a bit unfair, but such is life. (On the up side, they give 16 lines to my favorite writer H.H.Munro, aka Saki.)
It is also pretty topical--it has room to give a third of a page to the Monica Lewinksy scandal--but not always as much as I'd like. Country entries often get their data only from 1995 figures, which in a 2000 enyclopedia seems a bit late. Still, I quibble. This is a great book.
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