Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience [With Carrying Case]

In 1909, W.E.B. Du Bois dreamed of editing an ""Encyclopedia Africana"" filled with all that scholars knew of the history, literature and art of the great continent and its diaspora. Such a tome, Du Bois hoped, would, like Diderot's Encyclop die, serve as a springboard for future scholarship and a bulwark against racist misconceptions. At the century's close, editors Appiah and Gates--an African and African-American respectively--have fulfilled Du Bois's vision with aplomb. For this accessible, fascinating volume, the two Harvard professors have commissioned and condensed more than 3000 articles by more than 400 scholars. Though the bulk of the entries are devoted to the African continent and its descendant cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America, the encyclopedia also addresses the African presence in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world (each article is color coded for easy reference). Entries range from a paragraph on Abaku s, ""all-male secret societies created by African slaves living in Cuba during the mid-19th century,"" to Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's six-page essay on ""Women and the Black Baptist Church."" The selections, which run the gamut from the Middle Passage, Rastafarians, the Montgomery bus boycott, rap and every African country, are notable for their clear presentation of facts and their cogent, fair-minded analysis. Some entries, such as John Burdick's ""Myth of Racial Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Interpretation,"" are really treatises on significant social issues. And the many minibiographies of accomplished artists--such as actor Paul Robeson, singer Diana Ross and saxophonist Charlie Parker--highlight the tremendous impact African-Americans have had on North American culture. Bursting with information and enhanced by contributions from its illustrious advisory board, which includes Jamaica Kincaid, Nell Irvin Painter, Cornel West and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, this book belongs on every family's reference shelf. Du Bois himself could not have done better. 1000 photographs, maps and illus. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. $500,000 national marketing campaign; featured selection of BOMC, the History Book Club and QPB; 10-city author tour; 22-city national radio and TV satellite tour. (Nov.)