Early in 1941, the editors of reference books such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, and Cram’s Popular Atlas of the World were having trouble keeping up. It was the war, you see.
Cram’s atlas (was there ever a less mellifluous brand name?) is new to my shelves, a manifestation of my mania for books that attempt to organize all that was known about the world at a given moment. But in 1941, the facts to be known about the world were alarmingly fluid. Cram’s knew well they would be out of date before the printing plates were even inked.
The Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary’s editors knew they, too, would be overtaken by events. The book sits on my desk, some 3 1/2 inches thick and weighing in at some 6 1/2 pounds. Published by Columbia Educational Books of Chicago (one of the many impostors using the name “Webster’s”), it competed in the crowded dictionary marketplace by being hefty and compendious. Advertised as a “Library of Essential Knowledge,” the tome included a collection of world maps. The problem was that Adolf Hitler’s armies were busy forcibly redrawing the lines. The essential cartographic knowledge of one week was out of date the next. What to do?
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