In a revised edition of their
American Heritage Dictionary of American Quotations (1996), Rawson and Miner offer a carefully assembled collection of nearly 6,000 quotations about American culture and life. According to the compilers, hundreds of quotations have been added to this edition, and original entries have been reverified. In many cases, this means that misattributed quotations are now accurately cited.
There are three means of finding a quotation: through the subject headings by which the main text is arranged, through the keyword index, or through the author index. Although an author index is certainly a useful feature, experience shows that when looking for a quotation, subject and keyword indexes are indispensable.
The individuals quoted here include the famous and the infamous, Americans and foreigners, and those from the distant as well as recent past. Pronouncements from George Abbott to Fran Lebowitz to Frank Zappa and plenty of personalities, presidents, and pundits are organized under more than 500 cross-referenced topics. The selections beneath each topic are listed chronologically, allowing the reader to track the temper of the times. One of the strengths of this compilation is the annotations, which set many of the quotations in context and in some cases help to correct years of misinterpretation.
As Benjamin Franklin observed in Poor Richard's Almanack, "Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors." Nothing will give those in search of some Yankee wit or wisdom as much pleasure as this browser-friendly compilation. Recommended for most reference collections. Carolyn Mulac
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"The careful editing and thoughtful layout of this work ensures its value as both a reference and a browsing resource."--
Choice"Assembled by Margaret Miner and Hugh Rawson...it immediately proved an invaluable resource to the editors here and, when not being consulted in the line of duty, a great pleasure just to read around in. Now the dictionary is back in a revised and enlarged edition...as stimulating and engrossing a reference book as you are likely to find." --
American Heritage"This compilation is one of that special breed of reference books that is both suitable for browsing and satisfactory for ready-reference use."--Booklist
"Most helpfully provides context as well as long-overdue credit."--
The Sunday San Diego Union-Tribune
