United States history : a selective guide to information sources /

Blazek and Perrault successfuly span the chasm between traditional listings of sources in American history and the burgeoning literature of the "new" history's attention to social and economic history of minorities, urban areas, science and technology, and popular culture during the last 30 years. Arranged by broad topic areas (general, politics and government, diplomacy, military, regional history, economics) the guide balances its focus by devoting 420 of its 947 main entries to the section on social, cultural, and intellectual history. Content coverage ends in 1975, but sources were published as late as 1993. Many main entries offer, besides lucid evaluative annotations, cross-references to "minor entries." There is an author-title-subject index. Entries are subdivided somewhat artificially in each subject category into sections entitled "library resources," "bibliographic sources," "information sources," and "biographical sources," and annotations spotlight strong points for the source, such as biographies, for particular groups of users. An essay prefacing each topic describes: publishing and research trends in that area; related associations and their publications; data sets such as census and those of Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, and the usefulness of indexes available in electronic format. Designed for students and reference/bibliographic instruction librarians, this guide is valuable as well for collection development. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries. H. H. Ives; American University Library