Customer Reviews

Gale Encyclopedia of Science 6v 3 (Encyclopedia of Science (6 Vol.))

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We have other Gale books in our Library but the Encyclopedia of Science is the most used. As other reviews point out, the cross reference system is not very helpful and words set in bold seem to be used as suggestions for further reading whether or not the further reading really relates to the topic. All in all, the third edition is still a strong addition to our library. The new editors for the third edition have corrected MANY errors found in prior editions and they have added a good deal more content of interest to our students. Despite some format flaws the set is very useful to a wide range of students and teachers.

Fortunately, I got it at a library sale for a fraction of that price.

The major pro: it's a good series of books for basic reference.

Major con #1: it's badly edited; there are many pages where there are chemical formulas that are misprinted, typos in headers, etc. I can only imagine if, say, Encyclopedia Britannica had this many errors.... [On the other hand, this seems to have been corrected for the third edition.]

Major con #2: the cross-reference system borders on the idiotic. The first time the title of *any* article appears, it is boldfaced, even if the context is essentially irrelevant.

Major con #3: it has a lot of depth in what it covers, but it isn't useful for reference on "deep" topics (e.g., if you want to know about optics, this book is good; if you want to learn about Fermi-Dirac statistics, go elsewhere).

All in all, if you can get this really cheap, try it. If not, though, you might be better off buying, say, several volumes of the Cambridge Encyclopedia series: you'd get more depth for the same amount of money.