| This volume is a revised and expanded edition of Salem Press’s American Indian Biographies, which was published in 1999. The majority of the essays in that first edition were taken from Salem’s Ready Reference: American Indians (1995), and 32 new essays were added. American Indian Biographies, Revised Edition includes all the subjects covered in the first edition and adds 60 entirely new essays and longer versions of other essays from Salem’s Great Lives from History series and American Ethnic Writers (2000), bringing the new total to 391 essays. Essays on living figures have been brought up to date, essay bibliographies have been updated through 2004 publications, and several new appendices have been added.
As the core curricula at the middle school, high school, and college levels have expanded to encompass the diversity of American peoples and wider historical perspectives, so has the need for such high-quality reference works on American Indians as American Indian Biographies. Indeed, the ongoing demand for such works has been demonstrated by the popularity of other Magill’s Choice reference sets on Indians: American Indian Tribes (2 vols., 2000), American Indian History (2 vols., 2002), and American Indian Culture (3 vols., 2004). Biographical encyclopedias, which are among the cornerstones of any library reference collection, have not always been able to fill the need for reliable reference covering key personages previously overlooked. American Indian Biographies, Revised Edition provides an affordable and authoritative resource for librarians seeking to fill such gaps in their collections. |
