The People's Chronology: A Year-By-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present

7000 pages.

From School Library Journal
YA-- This chronological desk reference for social and political history covers prehistory through 1991. The concise, although chatty, entries are arranged by category (identified by a symbol in the left margin). A comprehensive index is included. Although one may initially plan to search for a specific bit of information, both the style and content make it difficult to stop reading. Students can locate information for assignments and collect data to bring conventional reports to life. Those working on decade reports will find popular songs, political figures, major events, hit movies, and much more. All will garner a better understanding of politics, daily life, and the arts during any time period, and almost any region of the world. Or, they can simply bone up on trivia through the centuries.
- Barbara Hawkins, West Potomac High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Trager's revised and updated chronology, first issued in 1979 ( LJ 9/1/79), joins a bevy of similar sources, including the recently published Chronicle of the World (Prentice-Hall Pr., 1990), The New York Public Library Book of Chronologies ( LJ 1/91), and a third edition of Bernard Grun's well-known The Timetables of History (Touchstone: S. & S., 1991). Of these works, Trager's packs in the most facts, conveyed via relatively lengthy accounts in two-column pages of more than 30,000 events covering all major areas of human endeavor from three million B.C. through 1990. Although the revised edition contains only about 40 more pages than its predecessor, much new material has been added, most obviously for recent years; likewise, much has been cut from the original, most of which will not be missed. The index--justifiably criticized as inadequate in the first edition--has been greatly expanded but remains an imperfect finding device; the 13-line account of Augustus Deodat Taylor's prefabricated house (the so-called "balloon-frame" house), for instance, is not indexed under such logical headings as "architecture," "buildings," "construction," "housing," or "Taylor." Entries in the text are loosely grouped by topic, designated by graphic symbols (dollar sign, artist's palette, mortarboard, etc.), but the symbols tend to be too numerous and ambiguous to serve as effective guides for pinpointing specific information. On balance, Trager's tome succeeds more as a browsing item than as a work for serious reference. Librarians will still prefer the standard, Grun.
- Kenneth F. Kister, author of "Best Encyclopedias," Tampa, Fla.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. amazon.com