A Crash Course

Almost all of what we call Western Civilization, that body of history, ideals, cautionary tales, artistic and literary movements, the wars that where fought, the dynasties that rose and fell, and the vision of a resurrected empire that would last longer and burn brighter than the one that was lost by the Romans and nearly lost from memory....all of that, the road that lead to who and what most English speakers are, can be traced all the way back to the ancient Greeks. So let's just say that to truly understand what makes your newly acquired English speaking friends, whom you met through your newly acquired second language, tick....requires that you know, at least a little bit, about everything that has happened in the Western Hemisphere over the last 3000 years.

If you really expect your new English speaking friends to open up to you and let you into their lives and bring you into their well guarded circle of influential friends and business associates, you are going to have to convince them that you understand their unspoken rules, secrete ambitions, and perception of self and purpose. In short, your going to have to find a way to fit in. People are a product of their environment. Sorry, but most well educated Native speakers of English have 3000 years of baggage we carry around that influences most of what we think and do.

Now...should you read the 100 greatest books ever written? Should you read Gibbons "Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire"? "Plutarch's Lives", Sir Steven Runciman's 3 volume "History of the Crusades"? Should you know who Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon were? Well, if you are going to pretend you know what they are talking about on CNN when they call Donald Trump Xenophobic, yeah you should know who Xenophon was.....and yes, yes, and yes to all of the above. However, if you are an ESL student you may have missed the starting gun. Let's be real; you probably missed the whole track meet.

But, don't panic! With the help of Wikipedia, and a few of my favorite compendiums on Cultural Literacy, you will be able to fake your way through, even the swankest cocktail parties, and sudden death business meetings.

This is just my opinion, but, if you use these tools to make it through the first year or two of that great new job you got at an American Multinational, you are clever. If you try to use this stuff to make it through the rest of your life, you are just plain lazy.

It is up to you, but I think it would be in your best interest to get cracking: You probably have about 100,000 pages to read just to meet the minimum expectation.

The book below, for which I found a PDF download, was published the year I went to University. I found it useful then and keep it handy, even now.

An_Incomplete_Education_-_3_684_Things_Y.pdf

"An astonishing amount of information."

--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

When it was originally published in 1987, An Incomplete Education became a surprise bestseller. Now this instant classic has been completely updated, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge. Here's your chance to fill in the gaps left by your school years, reacquire all the facts you once knew then promptly forgot, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always suspected you could be!

What was so important about the Dred Scott decision? Why aren't all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers? What happened inside Plato's cave? What's the difference between a fade-out and a dissolve? Fission and fusion? Shi'ites and Sunnis? The apostles and the disciples? Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day? And for extra credit, how do you tell deduction from induction?

An Incomplete Education answers these and thousands of other questions with incomparable wit, style, clarity, and brevity. American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science, and World History: Here's the bottom line on each of these major disciplines, distilled to its essence and served up with consummate flair.

In this new edition you'll find up-to-the-minute analyses of the geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe, Indochina, and the Horn of Africa; the latest breakthroughs in cloning and gene splicing; brand-new takes on the economy, from disinflation to global competition; a look at the recent upheavals surrounding abortion rights, free speech, and the death penalty; and much, much more.

Ponder the legacies of eight American intellectuals (a couple of whom aren't even dead yet). Get a handle on 350 years of opera; the central ideas of Freud and five of his famous followers; the meanings of eighteen inscrutable-looking adjectives, from jejune to heuristic, numinous to otiose. Bone up on entropy and evolution. Take a whirlwind tour of English poetry from Chaucer to Yeats. Learn what to look for in Rubens or Rembrandt, The Birth of a Nation or Citizen Kane.

As delightful as it is illuminating, An Incomplete Education packs ten thousand years of culture into a single superbly readable volume. This is a book to celebrate, to share, to give and receive, to pore over and browse through, and to return to again and again.

Above, sourced from Amazon's book review of the new revised addition of "An Incomplete Education" from 1995.

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