Pretty much before this supposedly paradigm-shifting dictionary even rolled off the presses, the Associated Press nailed them for a series of inconsistencies which call the book's value as a reference into question. The problems range from referring to Abigail Adams not as "first lady" but as a "feminist" to referring to J. Edgar Hoover as only "a lawyer."  Perhaps the most frightening is calling Francisco Franco an "authoritarian leader" but Joseph Stalin merely a "statesman."   It's doubtless a tough task to maintain consistency throughout a work of 1728 pages that contains a whopping 320,000 entries, but mistakes like these are troubling.

On the plus side, the book does have a few decent innovations, like intentional listings of commonly misspelled words (with a slash through them) which guide you to the correct spelling.  There's also a guide to doing research on the Internet and an English Usage Guide, though one would hope that every college student still has a Strunk & White on his desk.

In the end though, the book must be judged by the standard it sets for itself : "The First Dictionary for the Internet Age."  This strikes me as silly.  The promise of the Internet is that it can place all kinds of information right at anyone's fingertips with the tap of a few keys; what then is the need for a paper dictionary ? It will be argued that there are times when you will want to look up a word without logging on.  However, this dictionary is quite specifically targeted at college students and intended to help them write their papers.  At such times, it seems safe to assume they will be on a computer, does it not ?

I can only speak for myself here, but I look up a lot of words and I always use the online dictionaries.  And if I want to know about Francisco Franco, I use an online encyclopaedia and a search engine.  If this is true of a forty year old man who doesn't know how to type, what are the chances that some punk kid is going to grab a reference book ?  I'd assume none.

(Reviewed:21-Aug-01)

Grade: (C) Orrin C. Judd

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