Historical Dictionary of the Korean War

This second edition—part of Scarecrow's "Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution and Civil Unrest" series—follows the 2003 original from Edwards, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Korean War at Graceland University and the author of many books and articles on the Korean War. A short overview of the history of Korea and the chronology of the war gives way to the entries, which are brief and factual with little analysis or context. Allen Millet, in a review of the first edition for the Journal of Military History, was very critical of the dictionary, especially for the exclusion of Korean and Chinese entries and for the glaring lack of non-English-language titles in the bibliography. The author has rectified some of these problems with new entries and an updated and expanded bibliography that now includes some non-English materials. Still, even with these additions, it remains a very Western-centric work. Moreover, the lack of analysis is problematic. BOTTOM LINE James I. Matray's Historical Dictionary of the Korean War is a superior work of much more utility to scholars or students. For a one-volume dictionary, buy that title instead, still available from Greenwood.—Ryan Johnson, Univ. of Mississippi, Oxford