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For a more direct route to a thumbnail sketch of icebergs, the reader merely finds the listing "Icebergs" in the alphabetized ten-volume Micropaedia, a fact finder's treasury of 102,214 short articles, none more than 750 words long and most much shorter. Because all the information for the Micropaedia is stored in computers, it will be easier to update than material in earlier editions.
Assembling, editing and checking the 43 million words in the 30 volumes of Britannica 3 (v. 37 million words in 24 volumes of the 14th edition) was a task that Editor Warren E. Preece compares to fighting a war. There was total concentration, joint commitment and excitement, he says, "but I don't know anyone who was intimately involved who would knowingly do it again." The staff of 360 was driven relentlessly—some were reduced to tears—by the deadline-conscious Adler. A few scholars balked at the restraints on their freedom to write as they chose. "It sounds a little brassy," says Preece, "but in every case, we told the contributors exactly what we wanted them to cover."
Preece and Executive Editor Philip W. Goetz personally plowed through 200,000 words of text a week. Goetz once struggled home with a briefcase full of articles on analgesics, Scipio, polymorphic biology, Canute the Great, Ethiopian culture and someone named 'Umar al-Hajj, "whoever the hell that was. * "— Curiously, neither editor claims to be a walking encyclopaedia. "To be a good editor, you've got to have a mind like a sieve," insists Preece. Adds Goetz: "I can talk for two minutes on any subject under the sun, but the third minute is usually a disaster."
Literate Articles. Macropaedia readers will still find the literate, initialed articles by world-renowned experts that are the Britannica's hallmark —but, say the editors, without the overlaps, omissions and inconsistencies of earlier editions. There is Arnold Toynbee on Julius Caesar and leading American Catholic Theologian John L. McKenzie on Roman Catholicism, English Embryologist Sir Gavin de Beer on evolution and Carl Sagan (see BOOKS) on the planets and extraterrestrial life. The late Sir Tyrone Guthrie writes about theater, Anthony Burgess examines the novel, Alan Lomax discusses singing, and Barnaby Conrad summarizes bullfighting. Although more than half the scholarly contributors are American or English, the authors come from a total of 131 countries. "A.S.A.," who writes on Mecca, for example, is Saudi Arabian Geographer Ass'ad Sulaiman Abdo.
The man who made Britannica 3 possible was onetime University of Chicago vice president (1937-45) and U.S. Senator (1949-53) William Benton, Encyclopaedia Britannica's majority stockholder and publisher for 30 years. Despite his pride in the current, 14th edition (first published in 1929), he supported his editors' decision to produce a totally new encyclopaedia and agreed to finance the venture. Benton was not on hand for the unveiling; he died last March, two weeks before his 73rd birthday. But in Britannica 3, he has a monument as impressive as any man could want.
*A West African Muslim leader (1797-1864).