Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: Biography 101!
Review: Being a person whom likes to learn about various subjects, this title was a natural choice, i.e., Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary. The book starts out with a well written preface; follows with explanatory notes; guide to pronunciation; abbreviations in this book; pronunciatiob symbols; biographies and finishes of by having a section on pronouncing lists of name elements, titles, and prenames. The entries are very well written and quite informative, e.g., the entry of Johann Willhelm Ebel, whom was a German Lutheran clergyman, whom lived 1784-1861. Therefore, I would verily say that this book in question ,i.e.,Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary, is quite usefull and a good purchase.

Rating:
Summary: This biographical dictionary is simply the best!
Review: Merriam Webster's Biographical Dictionary is an excellent source of information on more or less important dead persons (yes, only someone who has already died can qualify for an entry!). It covers all fields of human activities - politicians, rulers, writers, inventors etc. Even a small Slovenian nation has its representatives in this comprehensive volume (e.g. composer Jacobus Gallus, poet France Preseren, writer Ivan Cankar, politician Anton Korosec), though, unfortunately, the real nationality of two very important Slovenes who lived in Austria (physicist Josef Stefan and Nobel laureate Fritz Pregl) haven't been revealed.

It's not surprising that in such comprehensive and informative book (it has circa 30,000 entries!) there are some mistakes (e.g. wrongly spelled first and even last names like in the cases of Viet Stoss - correctly spelled first name is Veit - and B. J. Feijoo y Montenogro - correctly spelled last name is Feijoo y Montenegro), and overlooked important persons (e.g. famous Welsh novelist and playwright Richard Llewellyn, who died in 1983, doesn't have an entry!)

However, it's still definitely one of the most authoritative biographical dictionaries available (it's simply the best, just like its twin brother Merriam Webster's Geographical Dictionary is in its field - see my review there!), and is worth every single penny or cent. I use it pretty often and hardly wait for a new edition with new entries and, of course, some necessary corrections (some of them contributed by me).

Rating:
Summary: Buyer beware: not worth the money, and you'll look foolish
Review: The producers of this book think only surnames matter. Examples:

1. How do you pronounce the "Vita" of "Vita Sackville-West"? Uh, is it "VEE-tuh" or "VIE-tuh"? Who cares? Let's just tell the buyer how to pronounce "sackville" and "west", in case that's not obvious (?).

2. How do you pronounce the "Childe" of the painter "Childe Hassam"? Who cares? Might be like "child" or might be like "chilled" -- too much trouble for us to research it, and any idiot must know how it's pronounced, huh? So let's just show the "hassem"-sounding part, and let the buyer guess about the given name.

Even when only the surname is in question, they can get it wrong. Example,

3. How do you pronounce the last name of the artist Charles Demuth? M-W says de-MOOTH (rhymes with "the Truth"). But the Demuth Foundation tells me "The Demuth family appears to have pronounced their last name de-MOOTH (similar to the German). Charles Demuth appears to have taken some artistic liberties with that pronounciation. The artist pronounced his last name DEE-muth after about 1915." In other words, let's ignore the way he pronounced his name during his prolific years from age 32 to his death at 52, and show the pronunciation he used before he had his first solo exhibit in 1914.

Buyer beware. If you go by this book's pronunciations (or lack thereof), you might look as dumb as it does.