The American National Biography (ANB) is a 24 volume biographical encyclopedia set containing approximately 17,400 entries and 20 million words, first published in 1999 by Oxford University Press under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. A 400-entry supplement appeared in 2002. In addition to significant investment by Oxford University Press, funding came from Rockefeller Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. The general editors were John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes.
The ANB bills itself as the successor of the Dictionary of American Biography, which was first published between 1926 and 1937. It is not however a strict superset of this older publication; the selection of topics was made anew.
It is commonly available in the reference sections of United States libraries, and it is available online by subscription (see external links).
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—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
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“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)