The Dictionary of Global Culture: What Every American Needs to Know as We Enter the Next Century--From Diderot to Bo Diddley

Under the letter H in The Dictionary of Global Culture are listed Ernest Hemingway, Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, German novelist Hermann Hesse, Hiawatha (the real one), Mexican political leader Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. M reveals the Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson, the (Chinese, anti-British) May 4th Movement, Maya (the people, not the veil), Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and, immediately below him (with lexicographic justice), Joseph McCarthy. Although the dictionary emphasizes ""the achievements of the non-Western world,"" editors Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (both of Harvard's Afro-American studies department) have compiled an eclectic and inclusive reference (which is being released with a 50,000 first printing). (Knopf, $35 717p ISBN 0-394-58581-X)