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Comprising over 750 entries in a single alphabetical sequence, the Cambridge Handbook of American Literature offers a compact and accessible guide to the major landmarks of American literature from colonial times to the present day. Entries on 500 separate authors, from Henry Adams to Louis Zukofsky, from Cotton Mather to Norman Mailer, give a full account of the subject's literary career. Entries on individual works - on major novels, plays, and volumes of poetry, from Absalom, Absalom! to The Zoo Story, from Moby-Dick to Catch-22, provide publication details and convenient plot summaries. There are entries also on the principal literary magazines past and present, and on literary movements as diverse as Transcendentalism and the Beats. There are helpful guides to further reading and chronological tables of American history and literature. Containing a wealth of authoritative, clearly presented information on the whole range of the American literary heritage, this is an invaluable reference work for the student and general reader alike.

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Library Journal Review

This Handbook seems intended as a less costly alternative to the Oxford Companion to American Literature (Oxford, 1983. 5th ed.). Both books provide concise biographical sketches of major figures, nonjudgmental plot summaries of major works, and commentaries on such related concerns as movements and literary journals. Both have tabular literary and social chronologies. The Handbook, however, has only about 750 entries while the Companion has more like 5000. Generally, the Companion 's entries are more detailed and the Handbook 's are slightly more current. The Handbook has a bibliography; the Companion does not. Only the most comprehensive collections will need both books; the Handbook is a fine choice for libraries not able to pay extra dollars for the Companion 's greater depth of coverage. Peter Dollard, Alma Coll. Lib., Mich. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Intended as much for individuals students and general readers as libraries, this new Cambridge handbook was designed to be more ``compact and accessible'' and, at $19.95, more affordable than larger reference companions to literature. This volume is the work of Columbia University's Center for American Culture Studies and is edited by Jack Salzman, the director of the center and editor of several books on American literature. Salzman and the center are also responsible for American Studies: An Annotated Bibliography, reviewed in RBB, March 1, 1987. The 750 alphabetical entries attempt to represent a core of writers, works, and movements in American literature. The bulk of the entries (500) treat individual authors, giving accounts of their literary careers with biographical and bibliographical information. There are also entries on individual works and on principal literary magazines, societies, and movements. Appended is a chronology of American history and literature from 1607 to 1984 in parallel columns, as well as a select bibliography of important critical and historical studies of American literature, excluding studies on individual writers. The body of the book is laid out in double columns with attractive, easy-to-read typeface, using boldface for the headings and to indicate cross-references. When works have no separate entry and are discussed only under the author's name, it is not clear how it was decided to make a cross-reference to the author. For example, there is a reference from In Dubious Battle to John Steinbeck, but not from Tortilla Flat or Cannery Row. Similarly, if one looks up The Magnificent Ambersons, one will be directed to Booth Tarkington, but Alice Adams or Penrod by the same author have no such pointers. The reference work to which this handbook begs comparison is the also recently published Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature (1986, $24.95) based on the fifth edition (1983) edited by James D. Hart. The Oxford volume (reviewed in RBB, January 1, 1987) is more substantial even as abridged. It has 2,000 entries compared with 750 in the Cambridge. While pared down from the original, the Oxford book still has a broader approach, including nonliterary authors such as sociologist Robert S. Lynd and reformer Jane Addams, and entries on social and historical topics such as Lutherans, the Plains region, or Jamestown. The Cambridge editor emphasizes that little that is peripheral to literature is included. Even within literature per se the scope of the Cambridge volume is narrower. In the R section it has 14 author entries compared with 40 in the Concise Oxford, and 8 plot summaries compared with 25 in the larger work. For libraries already owning the larger Oxford companion, neither the Cambridge handbook nor the Concise Oxford Companion is a necessary acquisition. Both would be suitable for individual users, being well produced and successful within their stated scopes.