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Honduras possesses a remarkable cultural history, and its share of distinguished leaders.

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CHOICE Review

Historical dictionaries are best written by local experts or by outsiders who have immersed themselves in the local culture over an extended period of time. The Meyers, he a retired professor (Univ. of Florida) and she a retired school teacher, have been traveling the roads, airways, lagoons, lakes, and trails of Honduras for more than 40 years. The first fruit of these travels was the first edition of this dictionary, ed. by Harvey Meyer alone (CH, Feb'77). The second edition is a vastly superior dictionary, almost double the size of the original, with 4,276 alphabetically arranged entries. There are new entries for every municipio, a detailed list of the colonial governors, a list of intendants from 1787 to 1821, and a complete list of heads of state since 1821. The dictionary defines terms such as "acuerdo" and "banana republic," gives a history of the Bay Islands and the Mosquito Shore, discusses agriculture under such terms as "bananas" and "coffee," and addresses poverty under entries ranging from "Agrarian Reform" to "Tegucigalpa." Largely ignored by the North American press, save for oddities such as the Soccer War of 1969, the region became a staging ground for the Reagan Administration's support of the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s. This support is described in entries for Elliot Abrams, Oliver North, contras, and Big Pine. Likewise, US involvement in the Honduran economy appears in entries for Standard Fruit and United Brands. There is a historical chronology (250 CE to 1994) and a detailed, topically arranged, annotated bibliography. Numerous black-and-white line-drawn maps and illustrations complement the other information. Overall, this is an outstanding volume, perhaps the best yet published in Scarecrow's historical dictionary series. Academic and public collections at all levels. B. E. Coutts; Western Kentucky University