A landmark scholarly achievement publishing February 2008 in 8 volumes -- Order early and save $200!The African American National Biography will present history through a mosaic of the lives of thousands of individuals, illuminating the abiding influence of persons of African descent on the life of this nation from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1529 through to notable blackcitizens of the present day.Available initially as a handsome 8-volume set containing over 4,000 entries written and signed by distinguished scholars, the AANB will continue to grow along with the field of African American biographical research, and continuous updates to the online edition will bring the total number of livesprofiled to more than 5,000. This is a remarkable achievement, an eightfold increase over the number of biographies contained in 2004's award-winning and substantial African American Lives.In addition to Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., the AANB will include a wide range of African Americans from all time periods and all walks of life, both famous and nearly-forgotten. In the words of AANB editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Thesestories, long buried in the dusty archives of history, will never be lost again. And that is what scholarship in the field of African American Studies should be all about."