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Historical Dictionary of the Baha'i Faith

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While this volume is lengthier and contains more information than "A Basic Baha'i Dictionary" (1989), it is less adequate in terms of ease of use. Preparation of a historical dictionary of the Bahá'í Faith is a daunting task. Librarians, researchers and publishers have significant knowledge of the optimal organization of such works, and ways to improve their usefulness. The prefatory remarks and appendices in this volume help to set a standard for what to include in future such dictionaries. This dictionary has the potential to be useful as a quick reference for basic historical events, people, and concepts. Scarecrow Press's incomplete editing of this work is immediately apparent, resulting in readers' frustration as they attempt to find the information they are seeking. Notable problems are machine alphabetizing which takes into account diacriticals, thus widely separating articles that should follow one another letter for letter, e.g GHUSN comes after GUNG; lack of criteria for inclusion and exclusion of topics; biographies often lacking in significant enough factual information; erroneous cross-references; double entries under different forms of an individual Iranian name; misspellings of names; and several factual errors. While this may be useful for the amount of content in comparison with other dictionaries, some readers may wish to supplement this with Oneworld's "Concise Encyclopedia of the Baha'i Faith", due in October 1998, and "A Short Encyclopedia of the Baha'i Faith" from the Baha'i Encyclopedia Project (projected date unknown at this time).