Images and a time line contribute to variety of topics in new volumes

One book contains 2,500 illustrations.
By RON BERTHEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Things are looking up for readers who like to look things up.
The serious researcher and the casual browser both can celebrate the recent arrival of several fact-filled reference books that specialize in a variety of subjects, from the ancient world to science and technology.
"The British Museum Timeline of the Ancient World" by Katharine Wiltshire (Palgrave, $22.95).
Place this volume on the bookshelf or hang on the wall above it. Wiltshire's book (she is with the British Museum) contains a 14-page fold-out time line, printed on one side and more than 9 feet wide, that can be removed and displayed. The time line covers about 6,000 years, from the earliest Neolithic settlements to the end of the Roman Empire, and covers the history of civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, focusing on key events, places and people.
Readers can study parallel comparisons of the four civilizations during a certain period or focus, from beginning to end, on the progress of only one. A fifth line describes significant events occurring elsewhere in the world.
Accompanying facts are color images, many of which show antiquities from the museum's collection.
"The Great Pictorial History of World Crime" by Jay Robert Nash (History, Inc., $249).
At $249, this massive two-volume work containing more than 2 million words and 2,500 illustrations packed into 1,700 pages might seem "criminal" to some but "a steal" to others. From ancient times to Osama bin Laden, crimes and criminals of various ilks appear in one of the book's 16 categories, including "Assassination," "Terrorism," "Bigamy," "Celebrity Slayings," "Gangsters and Organized Crime," "Unsolved Homicides" and even "Cannibalism."
Among the illustrations are a map of New York showing when and where the 1970s serial killer "Son of Sam" struck; an encrypted message written by San Francisco's Zodiac killer and its solution; and a "wanted" poster seeking information about toddler Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., kidnapped from his New Jersey home in 1932.
Speaking of "wanted" posters, there are enough portraits of bad guys to decorate several post offices, including gangsters Al Capone and Charles "Lucky" Luciano, swindler Charles Ponzi, bigamist Elizabeth Chudleigh, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and kidnapper-murderer Wayne Williams.
There's a 50-page index and -- in case all that crime isn't enough -- a bibliography with 12,000 entries.
"African-American Lives" edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford University Press, $55),
Biographies of more than 600 black Americans are contained in "African-American Lives." Noteworthy blacks from various fields -- entertainment, science, religion, politics, business, sports, literature and others -- are profiled on the more than 1,000 pages with a generous complement of black-and-white photographs. Subjects are arranged alphabetically, from Hank Aaron to Whitney Moore Young Jr., and span more than four centuries, beginning with Esteban, the earliest-known African to set foot in North America (1528), right up to tennis-star siblings Serena and Venus Williams, born in the 1980s.
There is a general index, a category index, and a list of prize-winners and other special achievements.
"The History of Science and Technology" by Bryan Bunch with Alexander Hellemans (Houghton Mifflin, $40).
The scientific world's important figures, discoveries and inventions are found among the 700 pages of this work. The 7,000 entries are arranged chronologically, beginning in ancient times with the making of stone tools, and are divided into 10 historical periods, each of which also features an overview of the era and essays on specific topics.
Readers can trace the entire chronological progress or single out any of several specific categories, including astronomy, biology, computers, food and agriculture, mathematics, medicine and health, and physics. Along the way are biographical sketches of 300 individuals, including Joseph Priestley, Charles Babbage, Thomas Edison, Linus Pauling, Marie Curie and Stephen Hawking.
You can look up something in the 50-page index or look at something in one of 300 black-and-white illustrations.
"Ship to Shore" by Peter D. Jeans (McGraw-Hill, $18.95 paperback).
A dictionary of a boatload of everyday words and phrases derived from the sea are listed from A to Y. Among them: "aloof," from the Middle English "luff," to keep a ship's head as close as possible to the wind; "moonlighting," which was originally applied to smugglers, who loaded their tainted wares at night; "listless," a term for the absence of wind, which caused the ship to not list; and "junk," a sailor's name for old or useless rope fragments, from the Latin "juncus," a reed or rush once used to make cordage.
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