Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students [Illustriert] [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Knowing that I was a history major, my teenage daughter raced in last night to tell me I had to read this book and review it. Since her tips are usually outstanding, I went off in search of the book and found it hidden on the back shelf of a local book store. I glanced at one page . . . and was hooked! Soon, my loud laughs were drawing puzzled glances from all directions. Even after I finished the book, I kept rereading it. Some of the humor is even richer the second time.

Professor Henriksson worked with friends and colleagues at over two dozen colleges and universities to locate these quotes from actual term papers and blue-book examinations. In some cases, he has done a little editing to improve the flow, but he says the actual words and spellings are unchanged. Apparently, these examples reflect what students have written over the last 30 years in U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities.

"Every generation has to make sense of the past for itself." This is a book of errors, but ones that show "the ingenious and often comic ways we all attempt to make sense of information we can't understand because we have no context or frame of reference for it."

The entire history of humanity as we understand it is covered, from the Garden of Eden to prehistoric times to the world of the 1990s.

The errors broadly fall into the following categories:

1. Astonishing misstatements ("History . . . started in 1815." "Plato invented reality.").

2. Misspellings based on not understanding what the real word is or means ("Fryers were required to take a vow of pottery." "Unoccupied Bishop Bricks could be cause for problems.").

3. Geographical misplacements ("The French king moved the Popes to Arizona where he could keep an eye on them." "The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor.").

4. People substitutions ("Dick Cavett was the first European to visit Newfoundland." "Yorktown was sight of Robert E. Lee's greatest victory.")

5. Misidentifications (". . . Spinning Jenny, a young girl forced to work more than 40 hours a week." "During the Middle Ages everyone was middle aged.").

6. Sexual Innuendoes ("Vauban was the royal Minister of Flirtation.").

At the end of the book are some hilarious maps that show where various countries and empires are "located."

To bring back a sense of reality, there's a brief quiz at the end (with no answers) that you can take to see how well you know your world history. I'm afraid that I failed the test. And my answers weren't nearly as funny as these. So the best laugh is on me!

I do hope that Professor Henriksson will gift us with another volume of marvelous work on fractured history.

For teachers of all subjects, this book points out the importance of getting feedback on what has been heard and understood in order to correct misunderstandings before testing students. That same lesson applies to all of us in overcoming the communications stall that plagues all human efforts at cooperation.

Where do you "make it up" when you don't know the answer? When would you be better off "looking it up" rather than "making it up?"

* "The Wholey Roman Empire amazed many when it was found in Germany."

* "The Hundred Years War (1320-1600) was fought over English holidays in France."

* "World War II became the Cold War, because Benjamin Franklin Roosevelt did not trust Lenin and Stalin. An ironed curtain fell across the haunches of Europe."

And my personal favorite:

* "Anarchism is a system of government headed by an Anarch. Canada, for example, became an anarchy in 1867."

If you enjoy this sort of dry humor, then get a copy of this book for yourself or for the teacher in your life. And for the sake of humanity, MAKE YOUR KIDS DO THEIR HOMEWORK!

After reading about 10-20 pages at a sitting, though, I find I begin to get tired of the endless strings of mis-heard, mistyped, or just plain confused ramblings of people who actually managed to make it into college somehow (and worse yet, people who may already have gotten out of college). In small doses, though, this book really is quite hysterical.

This one goes straight to the magazine basket in the bathroom, where it will be much appreciated.