Pomante (Tulane) and Schraufnagel (Northern Illinois) provide a valuable service to researchers with this expanded version of their historical handbook, published in 2014. It now incorporates President Barack Obama's second term. The benefits of edited volumes in print or electronic formats include the provision of context as well as valuable third-party fact-checking through peer review before publication. In addition to the A–Z entries, readers get a chronology, cross references, and useful appendices on the cabinet, presidential and mid-term election returns (and their analyses), executive orders, veto activities, and Roper Center–sourced public approval ratings. A bibliography, which will grow in time, and black-and-white photographs with descriptive captions join the list of this compendium’s components. Although the evaluation of this period may change, this book provides an essential background of facts and figures. Curiously, other books in this series designate particular presidents' terms as "eras" (e.g., Nixon-Ford, Reagan-Bush, and George W. Bush); 44th's is described as "administration." Obama was a consequential president, and this apparently first complete dictionary on his presidency is an essential contribution to the fields of history and political science.
Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.
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