HIST4800: Seminar in U.S. Foreign Policy: Bibliographies / Guides to Historical Literature

Excellent annotated bibliography covers the full span of U.S. diplomatic history with over 16,000 entries covering reference works, primary materials, historiography, biographical, thematic and geographical studies, and much more. Organized into 32 chapters following a chronological pattern, about three-fourths of the bibliography is devoted to 20th century topics. This should be the first stop for any student doing a research paper on a topic in U.S. diplomatic history.

Organized under topical and chronological headings, this guide features 37 chapters with annotated citations to web sites selected by the editors as useful for historical research.

1,184 numbered references to English-language materials relating to the military history of the U.S., including all branches of the armed forces. Also functions as an accessible, selective guide to other relevant reference sources in military history. The first 14 chapters offer a chronological treatment of armed conflicts from the Colonial era through the Persian Gulf War. The remaining nine chapters treat specific topics such as terrorism and intelligence and espionage, and various information resources such as journals and organizations and associations. Approximately two-thirds of the entries have annotations that vary greatly in length from a few words to half a page, but are pertinent and clearly written. [Choice]

This volume provides a basic survey of the historiography (12 p.) and major events (80 p.) of the Cold War, 1945-90, interspersed with brief discussions of common questions, from how effectively Roosevelt negotiated at Yalta to what led to the end of the Cold War. The somewhat fewer than 90 brief encyclopedia-like articles include basic (mostly U.S.) names and concepts, but omit many found in typical general encyclopedias (e.g., Zhou Enlai, Gomulka, Dubcek, Masaryk, Kadar). Most useful are the well-annotated bibliography of English-language sources, complete and handily organized by topics arranged in rough chronology, and the lists of archival and Web sources and of relevant films. [Choice]

The editors successfuly span the chasm between traditional listings of sources in American history and the burgeoning literature of the "new" history's attention to social and economic history of minorities, urban areas, science and technology, and popular culture during the last 30 years. Arranged by broad topic areas (general, politics and government, diplomacy, military, regional history, economics) the guide balances its focus by devoting 420 of its 947 main entries to the section on social, cultural, and intellectual history. Content coverage ends in 1975, but sources were published as late as 1993. Many main entries offer, besides lucid evaluative annotations, cross-references to "minor entries." There is an author-title-subject index. Entries are subdivided somewhat artificially in each subject category into sections entitled "library resources," "bibliographic sources," "information sources," and "biographical sources," and annotations spotlight strong points for the source, such as biographies, for particular groups of users. An essay prefacing each topic describes: publishing and research trends in that area; related associations and their publications; data sets such as census and those of Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, and the usefulness of indexes available in electronic format. Please note that a personal netLibrary account is required for off-campus access to the electronic version. [Choice]