Scarecrow Press was founded by Ralph R. Shaw in 1950[1] to show that scholarly books could be published on a tight budget.

The main section is the historical dictionary which covers events, people and places, and additional topics appropriate to the subject.

[2][3] In his 1980 review article of the African volumes, David C. Tambo noted that the Historical Dictionaries had been subject to an unusually high level of criticism for a reference series.

While librarians had lauded the works for filling a long-standing gap in the scholarly literature, academics complained about poor editorial choices, uneven quality, and a lack of factual accuracy.

Tambo attributed the unevenness in quality to the practice of the publishers of using a single author for each volume, who often was not an historian, possibly in an attempt to save money.