Publication of the Cambridge Histories began in 1960 and today there are over 250 volumes.  Authored by distinguished scholars, they are an excellent place to begin research.  They offer a contextualized overview – respecting history as evolution and continuity across time – suggesting how one event or thing is related to another.  They give the BIG picture.  They are a natural complement to such resources as Gale Virtual Reference (a huge collection of scholarly encyclopedias) and Blackwell Reference (a large collection of scholarly handbooks and dictionaries).  Entries conclude with bibliographies.

In Cambridge Histories Online, topical multi-volume sets may be searched individually, within topical groupings (for instance, American history, British history, economic history, general history, history of science, music, religious studies, and philosophy) or you may search across the entire collection.  Multi-volume sets cover such topics as:  the history of the book, Latin America, ancient history, India, modern history, Europe, modern Britain, Africa, American literature, China, Iran, Islam, Japan, Judaism, law in America, the United States, the Bible, native peoples of the Americas, medieval history, Egypt, 18th century philosophy, food, and Greek and Roman warfare.