Missing What's Missing
When the last post featured The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (it had 3 editions), I was tempted to title that book "audacious" or "admirable" or "ostentatious" because its subtitle was "What Every American Needs to Know." Maybe "pompous" would have been a better word. Admittedly, I bought the book when it first hit the shelves way back in 1988 and indeed found it fascinating, a sort of mini-encyclopedia, one which I begin reading from the opening page. But less than a quarter of the way through, I tired of it, for it was indeed an encyclopedia of sorts, or a dictionary, a book not meant to be read page to page but rather one meant to be peeked at when the urge hit (much as I noted when I used its definition of the word "prejudice" in my post). But step back and imagine that you were one of the authors of the book, perhaps meeting for coffee or a chat, and debating whether you should tackle such a large project (a s