Book Review: Encyclopedia of African American Business: Updated and Revised Edition, 2nd ed.

Abstract

The African American contribution to business and economic institutions in America is significant and spans “the period from 18th-century America to the present” (xlv). This encyclopedia is unique in being a reference work dedicated solely to exploring this contribution and its impact. In the preface, the editor, Jessie Carney Smith, Dean of the Library and Camille Cosby Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Fisk University in Nashville, TN, mentions, “one subject that has been met with somewhat limited appeal is African American books on businesses, merely because the focus is narrow and unlike the wider scope of literary works” (xli). This explains the dearth of similar works in the field. It is this gap that motivated her to first publish this work in 2006 and prompted the publisher to reissue it eleven years later in 2017.