Cultural Enrichment

(This list is our Christmas gift to applicants in 2009.)

Preparing yourself for law school is more than getting an LSAT score and a new laptop. One of my students found a list of 5,000 words and phrases entitled "What Literate Americans Know."  Much of it functions as a vocabulary list -- amnesty, amnesia, amino acids.  Since I'm more interested in the gaps in your historical knowledge, I've chosen several hundred names of people, places, and catch-phrases.  Some of them are fictitious, some are ancient, a few (like Elvis) should be obvious.  But all of them have some historical significance beyond the obvious one.  

Why do you need to know this stuff?  Because one day, if you're very lucky, you'll meet a senior partner at a law firm -- and he'll know these things.  And if you don't, you may join the ranks of the unemployed. A poor background in Cultural Capital often hurts minority and disadvantaged lawyers. If you can't converse with well-educated clients, what good are you?

Despite its importance, I think over the years four or five of you have looked at it. When I reviewed it recently, I could see why: it's just too daunting. And where on earth are you going to find W.E.B. DuBois anyway?

Well, that answer's easy these days: Wiki knows everything! But there's still that daunting disarray. So I decided to spoon feed you nice, manageable chunks, already linked to their Wiki pages. That also gives us the advantage of being able to add throughout the years without worrying too much about the ABCs.

Our Wiki Challenge

So without further ado, here's the "what the heck, why not look?"
version of cultural enrichment.

Gary, my honorary nephew and sometime employee, added the first new link to our collection: Cape of Good Hope and Cape_Agulhas. 

I've decided to add Manhattan, because Peter Minuit, not Peter Stuyvesant, bought Manhattan from the natives.

Alexander_Solzhenitsyn is too famous a Soviet writer and often political prisoner to ignore. 

One of my film buffs says we must know the "Big 5" and "Little 3" studios.

"No Man's Land" is a phrase, like "Mexican Standoff," much-used by an earlier generation, especially in the context of war. 

Xanadu is NOT a fictitious place, although much of Coleridge's poem by that name might be fiction. 

Susan Butcher is famous for her controversial entry to and accomplishments in the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.  Although Libby Riddles was the first woman to win the Iditarod, in 1985, it has been suggested that she won only because Susan Butcher had to scratch after her team was demolished by a moose. 

Liz Taylor made her fame, not as the goddess of films in the 1960s and 70s, but as a 12-year-old star in National Velvet in 1944. 

Now, returning to the original 600-plus list: 

The Ancient World

There are certain names in the ancient world everyone should know: King Tut; the Terra Cotta Warriors; Genghis Khan. Here's a list of 35 "should knows" of the world before 1000 AD, complete with their Wikipedia links.

The Medieval World

From the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Italian Renaissance not much happened, and most of what did was associated with either wars and kingdoms or churches and religions. So even though I deliberately chose not to make either religion or war an actual topic, they were pretty much unavoidable here. Feel free to send in suggestions to add to these 35, but the more secular and pacifist the better.

European Imperialism

If the line between Medievalism and the Renaissance seemed blurred, the one in this category is as ill-defined as a Monet painting. How can one separate European Imperialism from American Colonialism? Badly, I admit. I chose some incredibly arbitrary lines: for instance, Ben Franklin was a politician in the Colonies, but more respected as a scientist in Europe, so I didn't list him as an imperialist. But I could include him in a list of famous scientists if I had one; you remember that kite-and-key bit, right? In distinguishing Imperialism from Medieval times, I tried to focus on whether the events centered around Europe or on exploration to the Americas. Because this is a betwixt-and-between category, it's also a shorter one, with only 25 entries.

Colonial America

This list runs a bit later than the previous one -- more like 1600 to 1800 rather than the 1500s to 1700s -- but more importantly is focused on what is now the United States of America. This list might be particularly useful to immigrants, because these 30 items are names most U.S. students learn in elementary school.

The Civil War Era

I could easily (and often do) argue that the seeds of the Civil War were sown in the English Revolution and the results have not yet ended. More traditionally, however, the period from perhaps the 1830s (when the Abolitionist Movement began to gain momentum as the clause in the Constitution [Article 1, Section 9] permitting the ending of the importation of slaves was ignored) to 1877, when the Reconstruction Era ended. All of the words in this category connect to the Great Unpleasantness in some way, no matter what else may cause their notoriety.

The Industrial Revolution…

Between the invention of the Singer Sewing Machine and Black Tuesday was a time of wealth and immigration, Capitalism and Union-Busters.  These were the Ellis Island years, when America became the multiethnic world in which we now live.  Subways were invented, as well as the Model T Ford.  Cities grew and slums took seed.  Some of the best and worst of what the word “America” stands for happened during this era.  If you know nothing earlier than this, you might survive; if you don’t know something about this part of U.S. history, you won’t make it in the Big Law world.  I’m serious, children:  if you think Kitty Hawk is a person, you’re in big trouble. 

…and its Legal Implications

Big changes like the vast immigration through Ellis Island and the explosion of capitalism through two gold rushes (California and Alaska) don’t happen without legal repercussions.  If you want to impress your law professors, investigate most or all of these legal giants.

Nazis and Communists

Between the election of FDR and the election of JFK, the world was in quite an uproar.  Having been born and raised in the United states, I of course know more of the U.S. version of events, and they include the following 25 items:

...and Other World Events

While we were busy singing “Over There” (you want to hear it?) and “The House I Live In,” (this one’s vintage Sinatra, folks, so don’t miss it!) a lot of people were singing other songs in other languages.  I don’t know the songs, but I can name 25 people, places, and events that were perhaps more interesting in their countries than James Cagney. 

Civil Rights and the Seventies

After all that history, we arrived at the period that we old folks consider “the present.”  You know:  the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, LSD, Flower Power, the Viet Nam war…and these 35 other people and places.

Special Interests

Okay, now that we’ve covered the general history of the world in 300 words, we’re going to look at those areas that only certain people care about.  Who are those certain people?  We don’t know.  They might be the people who interview for Cravath, or one of the most favored clients at Milbank.  They might be your supervising attorney at your summer internship, or your father’s second cousin, the judge.  I wouldn’t bother you with them, but I’ve seen people lose jobs over them.

Philosophers and Social Theorists

This is another “where do you draw the line?” category.  Certainly Buddha is a philosopher, but he’s famous as a religious leader.  Francis of Assisi, on the other hand, is noted for a particular philosophy, not just because he’s one of the hundreds of Roman Catholic saints.  Is Ayn Rand a philosopher or a novelist? My philosophy professors gave a very different answer from my Objectivist friends.  Nonetheless, it’s a list of 25 names that will spark conversation in virtually any educated circle.

Musicians

If you thought some of the other lists were arbitrary, wait'll you see this one! I could triple it without blinking -- I am, after all, the woman with 6,000 songs on her mp3 player. But I've tried to stick with my theme — who do the senior partners know? That still took me a bit afield, and could easily have taken me further, but I applied my other rule: the goal isn't to teach you everything, it's to teach you something. So, without further apology, here's a list of 35 names you might want to recognize.

Artists and Art Forms

Artists represent another endless category: Hitler painted roses, after all. And Marcel DuChamp said, "If it sells, it's art." But again I went for popular names of a certain age group, and gave you 30 talking points should the conversation wander to the other Met (the one without the music). (Here's the one with the music)

Authors and Journalists

The title was easy -- the definition, impossible. Do we include epics to epigrams? Ancient to Post-Modern? Drama, poetry, newspaper features? And what about Dear Abby and Miss Manners (or, for the guys, Dave Barry and Gene Weingarten)? So we just shrugged our shoulders and tried to create a potpourri of writers of all sorts. We drew the line at murder mysteries and Harlequin Romances, but there's probably at least one of everything else in this list of 45 writers.

Legends and Folk Heroes

You know who these people are; they’re the ones who, when mentioned in conversation, cause older people to respond to the blank look on your face by saying, “You mean you’ve never heard of…?” Then they either politely explain or kindly change the subject of conversation.  And you’ve lost – the job, the seat in the law school, the date, the contract, the whatever it was that you lost for want of a nail. 

You may notice that some of these people and places are on other lists as well.  Sinatra is a singer, but he’s also a folk icon whom you must know, especially if you’re within 500 miles of New Jersey.  T.S. Eliot wrote the poems that became the musical “Cats,” but no one will think you’re ill-educated for failing to know that.  (On the other hand, knowing could land you a summer internship.)  Some of these references are fictitious; others are real, but the reason people use them isn’t (like Timbuktu, for example). 

Catch-Phrases and Odd References

 “From here to Timbuktu.” as I mention above, Timbuktu is a real place. “Ivy League:” you thought it referred to a quality education, not a football league. Well Stanford will give an excellent, awesome, superb, education, but not an Ivy League one.  It’s in the PAC-10.  So figure out not just what these 30 items are, but why people say them. 

Famous Feminists

Some feminists, like Emmeline Pankhurst, are famous simply for being feminists.  Others, like Alice Walker, are famous for their writing, which (not coincidentally) covers ground-breaking feminist turf.  A third group were just stubborn women who refused to be deterred, thereby becoming legends, like Rosa Parks.

Athletes

Some will argue that this is the most important list, because sports is what everyone knows. Others will argue that this is the most useless list, because sports is what everyone knows. A third group will argue that this is the most useless list because it doesn't include the time-honored male-dominated team sports that we have come to know and either love or hate.

So I admit: these are the also-rans -- or at least the rans. They are the track and field legends, tennis players, the swimmers and divers; they are the skiers and skaters, long-jumpers and discus-throwers, who are so often ignored in favor of those Damn Yankees. I chose fifty from a tradition that spans over 1800 years, so of course I neglected your favorites. I'm sorry. Send them in to me, and we'll gather them for the anniversary page. But if they're members of a televised team sport, they have to be real legends, not a mere Pete Rose.

P. S. Serena Williams is not listed above Venus out of anything but serendipity; I'll leave the two of them to settle the ranking.

Best Movies

We threw in the towel here. There's just no way we could pull a list of movies you should know. Yeah, sure, everyone can name Casablanca and the African Queen. But what about The Miracle Worker, or To Kill a Mockingbird: do we have to specify editions and years? Do we include musicals? comedies? documentaries?

So we've cheated; we let somebody else do the work. I did make sure, though, that most of my favorites were represented -- a straw poll of one, granted, but it IS my web page :) Click here for an astonishingly exhaustive list of movies.

Best Actors -- Male and Female

The best list of the best 100 actors included only men; then about an inch away was a link for the 100 best women. I liked the lists way better than some others I looked at, so you get double the actors or double the work, depending on your point of view. Note that the list of women gives you the bonus of listing movies. A feminist could argue that this implies that the men are always good, while the women are only notable on occasion, but I'm not feeling that feminist today. Instead, I'm feeling like I got a free list of movies to browse and see what I've missed. I hope you feel that way too