Featured review: Reference Shearer, Benjamin F., editor. Home Front Heroes: A Biographical Dictionary of Americans during Wartime. Jan. 2007. 3 vols., 935p. Greenwood (978-0-313-33420-7). Here is a unique A–Z biographical dictionary that profiles 1,001 individuals whose actions “affected how the United States made, supported, perceived, and protested its major war efforts from the Revolution to Gulf War II.” The editor is a librarian who has written and edited several reference works, and the 65 contributors are experts in history and other relevant areas. Numerous black-and-white portraits enhance the biographical sketches, which highlight the subjects’ wartime contributions (although some oddly allude to multiple marriages and offspring when those details seem irrelevant)....
