The New Penguin Encyclopedia 2003 (Penguin Reference Books) (Hardcover)

"The New Penguin Encyclopedia 2003" is essentially a quick-reference, hard-facts tome. To give you the hard facts, it contains more than 27,000 alphabetically organised entries - about 17,000 on general topics, 7,000 biographical entries and 4,000 gazetteer entries. About half the entries average 125 words in length and another 45 per cent a mere 50 words. If it has any claims to being a hybrid, like "The Hutchinson Encyclopedia", it must be based on the 5 per cent of entries that average 500 words. But few of these match in length and depth the "specials" in the Hutchinson, such as Roy Porter's piece on Surgery and Nigel Dudley's essay on Rainforests.

The Penguin differs from the Hutchinson in one other significant way. It is a pretty grey production relying entirely on black-and-white line illustrations, in contrast to the Hutchinson which is ablaze with colour and adazzle with many times more photographs, maps, charts, boxes, lists and other typographic devices that help illustrate text content and bring it to life. Even the greyish "Macmillan Encyclopedia" uses black-and-white photographs and includes a color atlas.

But not even the Hutchinson, let alone the Penguin, can match the revolutionary "Random House Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition" of 1990 (now sadly out of print)that transformed our expectations of the imaginative ways in which general knowledge can be presented. It included 2,912 pages (3m words) and 13,500 illustrations, 11,325 of which were in color.

In terms of content, this puts the Penguin into perspective. In terms of mere text, "The Columbia Encyclopedia" puts it into a different perspective. The Columbia has few illustrations but includes 6.5m words in its 3,000 pages of three-column small print and is based largely on essay-like substantial essays, complete with bibliographies.

The Penguin does, however, offer some advantages. Its smaller format, for example, makes it easier to handle than any others mentioned. You couldn't read the Columbia happily with it on your lap. You could just manage with the Hutchinson. But you can hold the Penguin comfortably in two hands for long periods.

Another advantage it has over the Hutchinson is that, because it is a first edition, the Penguin's entries are more smoothly written. The prose throughout supports editor David Crystal's prime boast - that his encyclopedia is succinct, systematic and reliable. His expertise in linguistics and wide experience in editing has also helped make the prose exceptionally clear. Much information is packed into small spaces and many of the 350 contributors have mastered the art of summary and the techniques of particularising the general.

Selection and balance is always a contentious matter in encyclopedias. One might ask, for example, why the topic of Communism merits 1-1/2 columns while the House of Commons (in a UK-based encyclopedia!) gets only a quarter of a column. I'm not suggesting Communism deserves less space but that the Commons deserves more. Moreover, it and most of the other entries on British politcs need much better cross-referencing. You can learn more - more easily - here about the political institutions of Europe than you can about those of the UK. Certainly, the changes to the House of Lords deserves a helluva lot more space than it gets.

Finally, this is another encyclopedia that tells you more about mandrakes and mandrills than about the things that have touched you in your daily life in more significant ways than a mandrill. Television and the Internet each gets a mere half a column and no illustrations. The credit card is allocated a mere 10 lines - this for an instrument that has revolutionised shopping and consumptionand the lives of ordinary Westerners.

You will also search in vain, as you will in all the main one-volume encyclopedias, except the Random House, for Lawnmower. Moreover, you come away from the Penguin with the notion that a car is mere assembly of parts. Everday things may be familiar but their broader implications aren't.

Encyclopedias, like good wine, improve with maturation. The Penguin is a good start but it has a long way to go. Perhaps when it reaches its sixth edition, like the current Columbia, it will have broader perspectives, better cross-references and those many blank pages at the end filled with more ready reference tables.