Reviews

According to Dr. Samuel Johnson, ``When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.'' In many senses this fine reference work confirms Johnson's oft-quoted words. With some 5000 entries, ample illustration, and excellent indexes (a general one and one covering people), it is an easily used tool. Well over 100 experts contributed to the book, and the co-editors have done an exceptional job in covering everything from the amusing to the mundane, the largely forgotten past to the vital present. To peruse the work's pages is almost to wear the shoes of George Macaulay Trevelyan as he walked at the side of his relative Thomas Babington Macaulay and had one noteworthy London site after another pointed out, along with a fascinating lecture on its history. Comprehensive, readable in a fashion seldom found in encyclopedias, and transcending anything of this sort heretofore in print, this is a work which belongs in both public and academic libraries.-- Jim Casada, Winthrop Coll., Rock Hill, S.C.