Now in its seventh decade of publication, Current Biography Yearbook will be familiar to all those with an interest in biographical reference material. The entries remain, as before, at an average of 2,500 words in length, each being an account of the subject’s life and career with basic biographical statistics, a monochrome photograph, assessments of the person’s contribution to her or his field of endeavour and a bibliography. The profiles attempt to be objective and, indeed, are largely factual, with elements of critical appraisal being injected through direct quotations from named commentators. The editor states in the “Preface” that the aim of Current Biography Yearbook 2002 “like that of the preceding volumes in this series of annual dictionaries of contemporary biography … is to provide reference librarians, students, and researchers with objective, accurate, and well‐documented biographical articles about living leaders in all fields of human accomplishment”. What this objective leaves out is that the book concentrates almost exclusively on people contributing to US society, be they American in origin or foreigners who have made their mark in the USA. As an example, the great Japanese baseball player Ichiro Suzuki has been a superstar in his home country for years, but only achieves an entry for the first time in this volume since his transfer to the Seattle Mariners in 2001. This feature is a result of the new addition to the “Current biography” family of references entitled Current Biography International Yearbook, an annual of previously unpublished profiles focussing exclusively on people from outside the USA which has been recently reviewed in these pages (RR 2003/415)..
The articles in Current Biography Yearbook are full of valuable background information, not only about the subject but also on her or his chosen area of work. In reading about the commander in chief of United States Central Command, General Tommy Franks, one is informed of the role of his post in “directing the day‐to‐day combat operations of the American‐led antiterrorism campaign” and that “together with President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, Franks is one of the four military and government officials charged with leading the military portion of the campaign”. Furthermore, there are profiles of people from widely differing backgrounds – that of the aforementioned Myers immediately follows one on Ty Murray, a professional cowboy and rodeo performer. It should also be noted that there are entries for musical groups (from the Emerson String Quartet to the rock group Flaming Lips) and the occasional re‐written entry such as that for the actress Maggie Smith that updates an earlier article which appeared in Current Biography in 1970.
The volume is completed by 60 pages of brief obituaries, all written by Kieran Dugan, a classification of entries by profession and the index to the January 2001 to November 2002 issues of Current Biography. Regular users will also be aware that all the profiles that appear in the printed publications are available online at: www.hwwilson.com/databases/
