An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't

(Hardback)

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A completely updated, revised edition of the classic, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge on global affairs, popular culture, economic trends, scientific principles, and modern arts. Heres your chance to brush up on all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you could be!

How do you tell the Balkans from the Caucasus Whats the difference between fission and fusion Whigs and Tories Shiites and Sunnis Deduction and induction Why arent all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers What are transcendental numbers and what are they good for What really happened in Platos cave Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day And for extra credit, when should you use the adjective continual and when should you use continuous

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

In this revised edition youll find a vitally expanded treatment of international issues, reflecting the seismic geopolitical upheavals of the past decade, from economic free-fall in South America to Central Africas world war, and from violent radicalization in the Muslim world to the crucial trade agreements that are defining globalization for the twenty-first century. And dont forget to read the section "A Nervous Americans Guide to Living and Loving on Five Continents" before you answer a personal ad in the International Herald Tribune.

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.

Reviews

Praise for An Incomplete Education

AN ASTONISHING AMOUNT OF INFORMATION.
The New York Times

IT IS PRECISELY THE BOOK THAT IVE ALWAYS WANTED WITHOUT KNOWING THAT I ALWAYS WANTED IT. . . . Its for people who have huge gaps in their knowledge of specific areas of culture and intellectual history. . . . Cheerfully, subversively anti-academic.
Jon Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle

MEMORIZE THIS BOOK AND YOU CAN DROP NAMES, ALLUSIONS, AND ARCANE TERMS WITH THE BEST OF THEM, whether you (or they) know what theyre talking about. . . . The book will rekindle warm memories of your favorite courses, favorite professors, favorite books, favorite theories, favorite philosophical paradoxes.
Chicago Tribune

RUSH TO YOUR NEAREST BOOKSTORE AND BUY An Incomplete Education. . . . [It] brings you 10,000 years of information. Imagine the power of knowing where Watteau went when the lights went out!
New York Daily News

ARTICULATE AND IRREVERENT, crammed with facts, figures, drawings, definitions, and historic information sufficient to fill your every gap. . . . Judy Jones and William Wilson . . . tell you everything you shouldve learned but didnt.
Esquire

THIS BOOK GETS AN A+.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Author Bio

Judy Jones is a freelance writer who lives in Princeton, New Jersey. William Wilson was also a freelance writer. Wilson went to Yale and Jones to Smith, but both have maintained that they got their real educations in the process of writing this book. William Wilson died in 1999.