Britannica Book of the Year: A Look Back at 2012

Over the last several months, Britannica Blog editors have selected and posted some of the outstanding content from Britannica’s Book of the Year 2013. Here, in anticipation of the volume’s arrival in print in the coming days, we highlight the Foreword, written by director and editor of the project, Karen Sparks. Click through on the links to access the publication’s content online.

Though some believed that on Dec. 21, 2012, the world would end (according to an interpretation of an ancient Mayan calendar), that notion was quickly dispelled when a new day dawned on December 22. Some signs of an apocalypse (weather-related) were in evidence during the year, however, with Superstorm Sandy rampaging through the Caribbean and the U.S. northeast and a drought choking crops and drying up waterways in the U.S. Midwest. By year’s end even the mighty Mississippi River was at dangerously low levels for watercraft to traverse. Included in this volume are Special Reports on Apocalyptic Movements, Superstorm Sandy, and Ecological Disturbances. Throughout the year the economic turbulence continued in the U.S. and Europe, and there are 3 Special Reports devoted to crucial economic issues: the U.S.’s responses to a sluggish economy and the federal budget deficit, the euro-zone debt crisis, and the bitter face-off between Keynesian economics and monetarism. The features represent just 6, however, of the more than 40 Special Reports in this newly designed volume!

Front cover binding of the 1938 Britannica Book of the Year, the first edition of the annual publication. Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

A significant ending did occur at Encyclopædia Britannica, however, as the company announced in the spring the discontinuation of the print version of Britannica. Though monumental, this decision was a long time in coming and afforded an opportunity for a redesign of the yearbook and a more engaging partnership with the print-set and online editors, who collectively brought fresh ideas and their scholarship to a number of the Special Reports. In addition, the yearbook editors focused on events specifically tied to 2012 and contributed Special Reports on milestone anniversaries and the London Olympic Games as well as an article on some of the new spectacular buildings that graced the horizon during the year. More topical coverage, including a roundup of U.S. Supreme Court decisions and exciting trends in sports (Adventure Racing), was introduced, necessitating the reduction or elimination of some standard articles.

In the expanded Biographies section, you will find portraits of such Olympians as American swimming phenomenon Missy Franklin (four of her five medals were gold); double-gold medalists American gymnast Gabby (“the Flying Squirrel”) Douglas, Chinese distance swimmer Sun Yang, and British distance runner Mo Farah; British heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis; and British road-racing cyclist Bradley Wiggins. Other personalities of interest are Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, among many others.

The Obituaries section was also allotted additional space. The music industry was hit particularly hard in 2012, with the deaths of Grammy Award-winning American singers Whitney Houston and Donna Summer, soulful singer Etta James, crooner Andy Williams, Anglo-Australian Robin Gibb (of the Bee Gees), British singer Davy Jones (of the Monkees), bluegrass musicians Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs, German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, composer and conductor Marvin Hamlisch, lyricist Hal David, jazz great Dave Brubeck, Indian sitar specialist Ravi Shankar, and American Bandstand mainstay Dick Clark. Other losses included those of penetrating newsman Mike Wallace, Wild Things children’s author Maurice Sendak, provocateurs Helen Gurley Brown and Gore Vidal, Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, longtime Penn State coach Joe Paterno, Gulf War general H. Norman Schwarzkopf, hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, sci-fi writer extraordinaire Ray Bradbury, the first man on the Moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, and actors Phyllis Diller, Andy Griffith, Ernest Borgnine, Larry Hagman, and Jack Klugman.

As scholars seemed to agree, the waning days of 2012 heralded a new beginning (rather than simply an ending), and 2012 was a new beginning for the yearbook, with features that many of [our readers] had requested in a survey a few years earlier. I hope that you enjoy the new format.

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