Clement E. Vose

Nixon's Archival Legacy

The American Political Science Association is dedicated to establishing archival policies that serve the scholarly needs of political scientists. A long-standing ally in this effort, the American Historical Association, has been joined in recent years by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Organization of American Historians and the Society of American Archivists. As the APSA representative on the National Archives Advisory Committee since January 1971, when I succeeded Harold Lasswell, I have worked closely with Evron M. Kirkpatrick, Walter E. Beach and Thomas E. Mann as well as Officers and Council Members in advancing policies I believe best serve us as research scholars and as citizens.

Political Dictionaries: A Bibliographical Essay

The editors and authors of these ten books call them dictionaries. All the same, these political dictionaries must not be confused with a standard desk dictionary, let alone the massive unabridged kind. Websters Eighth New Collegiate Dictionary (1973) has 150,000 entries with 27,000 usage examples which, with some additions, is based on Websters Third New International Dictionary (1969) with 450,000 entries and 200,000 usage examples. The largest of the volumes reviewed here has fewer than 4,100 entries, and most have far fewer, so that the books are not comprehensive in the sense of exhausting their subject and capturing all possible terminology.t It remains true that the more specialized books here, limited to definite subjects, provide cohesive and ample treatments. This is particularly true for Abrams on cities, Luttwak on armaments, and Safire on American political catchwords and usages. They are really books that could have been cast in other forms than dictionaries, but their authors simply found it attractive to do their work in this format