Word: encyclopedia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...BASEBALL ENCYCLOPEDIA...
...Stadium closed for the season. Faced with such spiritual deprivation, Cato fell on his sword and Ishmael shipped out to sea. Baseball buffs have a better way of alleviating off-season angst. Like fundamentalists who find solace in Scripture, they take down their own holy writ entitled The Baseball Encyclopedia. Impervious to time and temperature, the good book returns readers to baseball's Jurassic era, when teams were owned by individuals rather than conglomerates, when the game was played on vegetation instead of plastic, when professionals had to hit at least .300 before they were considered superstars...
Heavy enough to induce hernia in the unconditioned. The Baseball Encyclopedia does not contain all there is to know about baseball. But it does hold more than enough to nourish the fan until opening day. It is the definitive reference book of baseball, the only tome that lists the year-by-year performance statistics for almost every man and child (Joe Nuxhall was only 16 when he pitched for Cincinnati) who ever played in the major leagues. The current (third) edition is now being sold out. There will not be another until 1980 -an aeon away to the true baseball...
Langer was the author of more than a dozen books, and edited the one volume An Encyclopedia of World History, which serves as a standard reference work for many students. Beginning in World War II, he served in several positions with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of State, and in 1945 President Truman awarded him the Medal for Merit for his intelligence work during the war. Even more commendable is the fact that during his years of government service Langer was a strong advocate of the right of historians and the public to gain access to classified government...
Despite such candid admissions, an air of optimism seems to pervade the encyclopedia. The editors believe that "a decade hence many of the problems mentioned in these pages will have been solved." Zoologist H.S. Micklem states that most of "the missing pieces in the jigsaw" of immunology will soon be discovered. The other contributing scientists, too, appear to echo Coleridge's declaration that encyclopedias represent a faith in "the progress of the future...