The Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th ed.

• Author: Kellman, Steven G.

Edited by Barbara A. Chernow and George A. Vallasi / Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 3,048, $125

With 50,000 entries and 6,600,000 words, the latest version of The Columbia Encyclopedia is lavish testimony to the range of contemporary information. For reasons suggested under listings for computer and book, this could be the last heroic project of the sort; future encyclopedias likely will be electronic data bases that can be emended instantly and variously accessed. For now, The Columbia Encyclopedia deserves a giant place in a reader's heart and on a sturdy study table.

The editors and more than 100 advisers and consultants, most of them Columbia University faculty, revised approximately 60% of the 1975 fourth edition. Since then, the world has been transformed, and so, too, are maps and discussions of the former Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The latest edition includes AIDS, Michael Jackson, fax, Roe v. Wade, Madonna, Eddy Merckx, Lockerbie, Anne Tyler, H. Ross Perot, cable television, Mario Cuomo, Greenpeace, Larry Bird, multiculturalism, Eduard Shevardnadze, Jerry Falwell, and deconstruction. Missing, though, are entries for Michael Jordan, Philip Glass, David Duke, Amnesty International, Charles Manson, virtual reality, Rush Limbaugh, e-mail, Klaus Barbie, Roy Rogers, William Shawn, cold fusion, Garth Brooks, Meryl Streep, and videocassette.

The editors admit to Yankocentrism, conceding that their compendium "remains an American encyclopedia written for American readers." The entry for the State of Georgia is twice as long as...