I think the Oxford Companion books are wonderful and this is no exception. It is easy to read without neglecting scholarship and very thorough. Everything I have looked up for my project has been there in some form or another. It is an excellent starting point resource with an excellent bibliography.

The Oxford Companion to Music is an excellent reference work for those who love classical music. It's probably not detailed or technical enough for most professional musicians; but those enjoy listening to the endless variety and vast range of emotions of classical music (that's a plug!) will find the OCM can considerably enhance their enjoyment.

This is a big work of 1,434 pages; but the typeface, while small, is well-chosen. It's clean and clear; even these old eyes read it with no difficulty. There are extended articles on famous conductors and all the major composers plus numerous others that you never heard of. The biographies are helpful in placing a composer's works in the context of his life. Especially helpful is a well-chosen but unannotated bibliography after most of the biographies.

There are also major articles on different forms of music, types of instruments, etc. I thought I knew a lot about the sonata form, but I know more now after reading that article. There is almost no analysis of individual works; to include them would probably have doubled the size of this work. I've used a number of classical reference works over the years, but the OCM is easily the best. It's complete enough so as not to oversimplify too drastically but not so long that "you learn more about penguins that you really want to know."

This is the bible, for lack of a better term, of political science.

I may be biased as several of the articles/definitions are contributions of my past professors, but the consistency of the writing doesn't hint that it is a compilation from many different experts.

In most cases, the contributing authors are the foremost authorities in their respective fields. That is apparent in the quality of this world-class publication.

When i first bought this book ten years ago, i was already an old rock fan but i didn't know much about JEROME KERN and IRVING BERLIN even if their names were familiar;this book made me aware of them.Plots,songs and original cast of all the classic musicals from SHOWBOAT to the present time are included here.What was the name of that musical in which MARY MARTIN first made MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY a popular song;you'll find out.Were was JIMI HENDRIX born?Why are the early LOUIS ARMSTRONG recordings so important to the developpment of jazz and popular music?Who founded LE CHAT NOIR that famous cabaret that made ARISTIDE BRUANT a well known name around MONTMARTRE and after that throughout FRANCE.I could go on and on , but since i don't want to bore you,i'll suggest that you get a copy of that book and cancel your plans for the week-end because if you like music, you'll be hooked for good.

This Oxford Companion is one of the most engrossing of all reference works. The book is divided into two hefty sections. The first contains 41 substantial essays on general themes of the era, such as "Revolution," "Industrialization," and "Empire." The essays are written by leading scholars including Jerome McGann, and each essay is concluded with a brief bibliography, which is a great aid to research. Moreover, the essays are fully indexed. This in itself would be a great read, but it's only half the book. The second section of the Companion is a 375-page encyclopedia containing short articles on a whole range of significant contributors to European romanticism, as well as longer articles on the period's various genres, movements, events, and minor themes. What's more, the two sections of the book are fully cross-referenced, and the book is well illustrated throughout. This Companion should be on the "Recommended Reading" list for every undergraduate Romantic-era history or literature course. Not only that, it should be read, as well! A challenging, often provocative, always insightful survey of the great sweep of British culture in the Romantic age.

I have found this guide to be an invaluable resource for researching theatre topics. It is an excelent referece, that gives the reader the direction necessary for more in depth research. Several well selected image plates clearly demonstrate key theatrical works, and illustrations in the book are excelent. Every college theatre major and professor should own this book.

Oxford has published a number of literary reference books, each with their strengths, weaknesses and biases. There are "Companions" to American literature and English literature, the gossipy and Brit-biased "Reader's Guide to Twentieth Century Writers," and now this prose atlas to the century's notable writers in English. It is, in a literary way, an embarrassment of riches.

Describing this extensive overview of everything worth noting about 20th century literature in English can be compared to the blind men describing an elephant. So much to cover, so many varieties of prose, and so little space to describe it all.

The giants are here, and if greatness is measured by the space allotted to them, then D.H.Lawrence leads, with two full pages dedicated to his achievements, followed by James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad (11/2 pages), Henry James (11/4 pages), and Graham Greene, William Faulkner and W.B. Yeats with one page.

At the other end of the fiction scale, where bestsellers reign, can be more problematic, with some authors worthy of inclusion (John Grisham, Scott Turow, Stephen King, a lonely line next to Barbara Cartland's name that refers the reader to the "romantic fiction" section) and others not (Michael Crichton, John Jakes, Danielle Steel). Genre writers tend to stand a better chance of inclusion, such as Georgette Heyer (romance), Jack Vance, Ursula K. LeGuin and Michael Moorcock (fantasy), J.G. Ballard, James Tiptree and Robert Heinlein (science-fiction), and Sara Paretsky, Tony Hillerman and John Mortimer (mystery).

Editor Jenny Stringer also went out of her way to include notable persons outside of literature -- The Beatles, Harvey Fierstein, Hunter Thompson, Tony Kushner and Theodore Veblen are in here -- as well as institutions, magazines and literary movements. Identifying these movements can sometimes be an exercise in deciphering obscure meanings. The entry on Modernism, for example, defines clearly its practitioners. Their works, however, "indicate the breach with the conventions of rational exposition and stylistic decorum in the immediate post-war period." Nowhere is there a phrase as clear as (and this is taken from an upcoming Oxford reference on James Joyce): "[Literary modernism] interrogates the legitimacy of traditional social institutions such as the family, the church and the state, rejecting their authority to prescribe and enforce moral standards of behavior."

Apart from that caveat, this Oxford Companion is a worthwhile aid through 20th century literature. Which one that is right for you depends entirely on where your taste in literature lies. It is only safe to say that there isn't a better guide anywhere.

This is a very good combination of Dictionary and Thesaurus -actually it's a short version of the regular Oxford Dic & Tes. . Very useful - and reasonably cheap!

The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors is an interesting compilation of the correct British spelling of unusual or easily-confused words including abbreviations, place names as well as famous and not so famous names connected with history, literature and politics. I would highly recommend it to journalists and editors, who need to know that Maldon is in Essex, that the battle of Malplaquet was in 1709, or that Benazir Bhutto (b. 1953, former prime minister of Pakistan from 1988-90 and 1993-96) is the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-79), former president (1971-73) and prime minister (1973-77) of Pakistan. A lot of the entries, such as "malcontent not malecontent," could easily be looked up in a dictionary, but you would certainly need a whole reference library to find the other entries. Overall a useful addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in words.

I found the dictionary extremely useful and wonderfully arranged. Delightful.