Contains 19,173 alphabetically arranged entries that provide brief biographical information about notable Americans who died prior to January 1, 1981; indexed by occupations and birthplaces.

Contains concise versions of over 17,000 biographies of famous Americans.

This one-volume abridgment of the Dictionary of American biography includes the 14,870 entries of the parent work in reduced form. Coverage is limited to persons no longer living and includes "explorers, frontiersmen, artists and scientists, craftsmen, inventors, businessmen, surgeons and physicians, feminists, scholars, politicians and statesmen"--Publisher's note.