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Title: Comprehensive but necessary?
Review: I have strongly mixed feelings about Hirsch's idea of cultural literacy. Regardless, this text is exactly what Hirsch promises it to be: a dictionary of cultural references. The one thing that Hirsch fails to state (and perhaps it's implicit within his tome) is that the cultural dictionary is developed from a fairly WASP-like perspective. He disclaims that it is what "every American" needs to know, but fails to recognize his operating stance. There is a heavy American, Judeo-Christian, masculine influence in his book. This is by no means an unbiased cultural dictionary.
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