Did you know this...

Billy Crystal's childhood babysitter was the legendary Billie Holiday?

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up at the sky?

The dot above the letter "i" is called a "tittle"?

Would you like to know which celebrities died virgins, or which novel was the first written on a typewriter? Or are you simply looking for some way to entertain yourself in the bathroom? Would you like to know the working titles of the Beatles' songs, or what things were invented by women? Answer "yes " to any or all of these questions and This...

Though best known as a novelist, Achebe is also a critic, activist, and spokesman for African culture. This reference is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to his life and writings. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries. Some of these are substantive summary discussions of Achebe's major works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Entries are written by expert contributors and close with brief bibliographies. The volume also provides a general bibliography and chronology.

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is widely regarded as the most important of the numerous...

The 3 volume Encyclopedia of International Sports Studies provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the science, social science and medicine of sport.

The Encyclopedia is alphabetically organised and consists of:

• principal entries of 3000 words covering disciplinary areas, e.g. sports economics, sports history
• large informational entries of 1200 words on broad topics, e.g. resistance training, diagnosis of sports injuries
• medium informational entries of 600 words on more specific topics, e.g. cross training, projectile...

The Encyclopedia of Social Theory contains over 500 entries varying from concise definitions of key terms and short biographies of key theorists to comprehensive surveys of leading concepts, debates, themes and schools. The object of the Encyclopedia has been to give thorough coverage of the central topics in theoretical sociology as well as terms and concepts in the methodology and philosophy of social science. Although 106 theorists are given entries, the emphasis of the work is on the elucidation of ideas rather than intellectual biography. The Encyclopedia...

The Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture covers gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer (GLBTQ) life and culture post-1945, with a strong international approach to the subject.
The scope of the work is extremely comprehensive, with entries falling into the broad categories of Dance, Education, Film, Health, Homophobia, the Internet, Literature, Music, Performance, and Politics. Slang is also covered. The international contributors come from a wide array of backgrounds: scholars, journalists, artists, doctors, scientists, lawyers, activists, and an...

The study of international relations has changed rapidly in recent years. Firstly as a consequence of major political and economic change the end of the cold war and the fall of communism, the resurgence of nationalism, terrorism and forms of fundamentalism, globalization and secondly, linked with these developments, because of the vitality of the discipline, with ongoing debates on the fundamental paradigms for the understanding of international relations and the emergence of the perspectives of feminism, postmodernism, constructivism and critical theory.

The Routledge...

New Makers of Modern Culture is the successor to the classic reference works Makers of Modern Culture and Makers of Nineteenth-Century Culture, published by Routledge in the early 1980s. The set was extremely successful and continues to be used to this day, due to the high quality of the writing, the distinguished contributors, and the cultural sensitivity shown in the selection of those individuals included. New Makers of Modern Culture takes into full account the rise and fall of reputation and influence over the last twenty-five years and the epochal...

The first in-depth reference in the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia is a two-volume set that brings together an international team of leading scholars to provide over 130 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science.

The areas covered include:

• biology
• chemistry
• epistemology and metaphysics
• physics
• psychology and mind
• the social sciences
• key figures in the combined studies of science and...

The Encyclopedia of US Labor and Working-Class History provides sweeping coverage of US labor history. Containing over 650 entries, the Encyclopedia encompasses labor history from the colonial era to the present. Articles focus on states, regions, periods, economic sectors and occupations, race-relations, ethnicity, and religion, concepts and developments in labor economics, environmentalism, globalization, legal history, trade unions, strikes, organizations, individuals, management relations, and government agencies and...