All Music Guide Editors Erlewine, Bogdanov, Woodstra & Erlewine (Miller Freeman, 1499 pages, 1997)

As ambitious as the title suggests, All Music Guide attempts to cover "almost any kind of recorded music."  Certainly, I don't know all of the types of music in the world, but the book seems to cover quite a bit, reviewing over 21,000 albums in very small print (That's about 14 albums per page, for those of you who are mathematically challenged.).  It allots 32 pages for reggae, which sounds like a decent amount, but its proportional share is less than that of the reggae section in World Music: The Rough Guide (Granted, AMG covers more than just "world" music.).  AMG certainly has an American leaning, with only about 150 pages allocated to world music/reggae/Celtic music, etc.  Still, this book is irresistible because of the sheer number of albums that it covers.  What I like most about this book is that it doesn't waste much time with a lot of background info -- I mean, how many times can you read the same historic data?  Instead, it just gives a brief (3 paragraphs!) summary of the development of reggae and a paragraph or two on each artist covered.  The book focuses on telling you which albums are good (and which aren't), most reviews ranging from a paragraph to merely a rating (based on a scale of 1 to 5 stars).  The reviews also point out which album(s) are essential and/or which are the first you should buy.  In all, over 500 reggae albums are crammed into these 32 pages, providing a sound overview of the major artists and albums.  All Music Guide is a reliable resource for finding out what to buy.