Customer Reviews

The Blackwell Dictionary of Political Science: A User's Guide to Its Terms

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I was studying at the University of Florida, I found this book to be invaluable to understanding the language of politics. Every political philosophy and ideology, major political theorists, political events, class distinctions, and history are covered in this book. It is extremely well organized and easily understandable.

A MUST HAVE FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE STUDENTS!

As for the review written by "a reader," who stated that "This 'dictionary' does not have an ounce of objectivity in it," I must say that this is not the case and I found it to be quite objective. Perhaps he/she could cite an example?

Blackwell does a good job trying to explain the meanings of each word or phrase or important person in the political science realm, however, after reading through most of the dictionary some words really needed further research to understand the whole concept of how it came about and a more accurate definition for the word. This is a great resource to have if you are in political science or for the active citizen who is involved with political debate but would like some clarity to certain terminology. The internet does offer a lot and could be used in place of this at times, but to have everything in one place easy to lookup is very helpful because the internet doesn't offer an accurate definition unless you search several sites and read through the messages in my opinion.

Regardless of their orientation in politics, I think most people would agree that a dictionary should give objective definitions of ideas, not opinions of the author. This "dictionary" does not have an ounce of objectivity in it. The author frequently substitutes his opinion of an idea for the definition of it.

Also, given the price, I expected a bigger book. It's not very large, though admittedly it has had most of the terms I wanted to look up in it.

If I knew of a better dictionary for politics I would recommend it; since I don't, I simply recommend not wasting your money on this one.