The Harvard Guide to African-American History: Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Harvard University Press Reference Library) - Tapa dura

I have just returned from a joyous if exhausting walk in the woods. Call it the W. E. B. Du Bois National Park of African American History. There, I found well-traveled paths and hints of future trails beneath the underbrush. Here and there stand weathered statues of known ancestors and memorials to the unknown. One comes upon little kiosks hawking memorabilia--your mammy sugar jars, your lawn jockeys, your Topsy/Little Eva salt-and-pepper shakers. There are vistas where one could bear witness to the breadth and magnificence of the uncharted terrain below. There are also wide swaths damaged by the aggressive deforestation of historical indifference and the clandestine (and then again not-so-very secretive) dumping of poisons. My tour guide through this thicket of profoundly American beauty?...The Harvard Guide to African-American History [which]--in its very vastness, its horizonless terrain--promises that far from limiting history, African American scholarship is on the case. It is liberating it. -- Lisa Kennedy Village Voice Literary Supplement 20010401 This massive guide, sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University and compiled by renowned experts, offers a compendium of information and interpretation on over 500 years of black experience in America...This single volume is commendable for its bibliographies and directories of library collections; its lists of web sites, photo archives, and film repositories; its fast and easy retrieval (by subject and author index); and its overall vastness...[T]his guide is ultimately an unparalleled authoritative reference tool to both print and nonprint resources on the experiences of people of African descent in America, making it an impressive complement to other reputable works such as Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Highly recommended. -- Edward G. McCormack Library Journal 20010901

This landmark guide covers research into every aspect of African-American life and work, offering a compendium of information and interpretation about almost 400 years of African-Americans' experiences as an ethnic group and as Americans. The first part of the Guide contains 12 essays on historical research aids, from traditional archival and reference materials to the Internet. The second and largest part presents comprehensive and chronological bibliographies, prepared by John Thornton, Peter H. Wood, Gary B. Nash, Stephanie Shaw, Richard J. M. Blackett, Eric Foner, Leon F. Litwack, Joe W. Trotter, Jeffrey Conrad Stewart, Nancy L. Grant, Darlene Clark Hine, Clayborne Carson, John H. Bracey, Adam Biggs, and Corey Walker. The third part contains listings of resources on the special subjects of women, prepared by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham; geographical areas; and autobiography and biography, prepared by Randall K. Burkett, Leon F. Litwack, and Richard Newman. A companion CD-ROM packaged with the book makes more than 15,000 bibliography entries available for computer searching.