The authors have "restricted the scope to the arts of painting, sculpture, and engraving in Western Europe and North America, and to a period beginning about the year 1300 and continuing up to the present day," because they are "almost totally ignorant of the arts of other periods and places." In that case, a different title would have been preferable. The emphasis is on technical terms, processes, and movements, rather than biographies, though there are many of these, which include a useful list of museums holding the artist's work. The Penguin edition contains "substantially the same" text as the fully illustrated 1965 Thames & Hudson edition. Entries contain succinct remarks, like this one about Edvard Munch: "He was friendly with Strindberg, and his art, though sometimes powerful, is always neurotic and frequently hysterical." ( )

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