By Robert Oliphant

Cultural Literacy, bless its heart, still has a place in the American consciousness (2,680,000 internet hits as of 4/20/06 ). Like many splendid ideas, though, it still hasn't made much of a dent upon day-to-day educational practice. Hence the desirability of salvaging E.D. Hirsch's work by focusing upon proper names and using them as a tool for encouraging nonfiction reading - especially in connection with home schooling and personal-best learning in the noble tradition of Franklin, Lincoln, and other great American auto-didacts.

Proper-name literacy . . . . The philosopher Richard Rorty has correctly nailed us down as a "nation of name droppers." Whether it be Jeopardy, Trivial Pursuit, PhD exams, pre-Alzheimer's testing, or casual conversation, our knowledge (and forgetfulness) of who's who is like a big neon sign telling our neighbors where we're coming from how seriously they should take what we have to say. (I know a woman, for instance , who stopped seeing her psychiatrist because he didn't know who Dwight MacDonald was).

E.D. Hirsch's onomastic choices, though plausible, are unranked and based upon personal whimsy. The personal-whimsy element should therefore be dropped in favor of a practically available and reasonably authoritative source, namely, Webster's New Biographical Dictionary (Merriam Webster, 1988). If we limit ourselves to entries that get at least 13 lines of coverage, we end up with a ranked list of 666 names (Appendix One) that tells us not only who's truly who but also who's more important than whom, e.g., Napoleon (83 lines) as opposed to Carl Zuckermayer (13 lines).

Proper names and nonfiction reading . . . . Hirsch's most compelling insight is his assertion that effective reading (including both speed and comprehension) requires an adequate cultural literacy vocabulary. His major weakness, though, lies in his suggestion that this vocabulary, including proper names, can be acquired through direct study, e.g., "As a step toward improving your reading skill, please memorize the accompanying 666-name list and be prepared to identify their dates of birth, nationality, and principal occupation."

We can salvage Hirsch's insight by turning his equation around. That is, we can use our 666-name list as a criterion for choosing "literacy-friendly"

nonfiction books to read. As indicated in Appendix Two , the proportion of names from our list in the index to a nonfiction book is often surprisingly high, especially in Pulitzer prizewinners. This means we can create a "virtuous circle" for ourselves by first reading "literacy-friendly" nonfiction, which will improve our proper-name literacy, along with our reading skills and even our writing skills - as demonstrated by Steven Krashen's voluminous research.

Nonfiction reading and the importance of testing . . . . Like any respectable physical-fitness program, a nonfiction program requires an honest measurement system. By way of illustration, here's a relevant statement by J.J. Cannell, M.D. that appeared in " Lake Woebegon : 20 Years Later," as published in Education News (Education News, 4/18/06 )

"The following week, Clinton encountered a front-page story in the states' largest newspaper about my charges of widespread cheating in Arkansas. 20 Clinton then called me and spent thirty minutes asking me questions about things he could do to stop the cheating. I told him the keys to preserving the validity of the test is changing questions every year, having a large bank of questions, maintaining a broad curriculum, testing infrequently, and not focusing on test preparation. [ boldfacing added] Another newspaper quoted Clinton 's response: "When he( Cannell) told me that, I said 'Gosh' we'll look into that. It may cost a few more thousand dollars but it's worth it if it preserves the integrity of the test." 21 A few weeks later, Arkansas announced plans for improvements in test security. 22 In1996, then President Clinton went on to recommend a national achievement test with strict security - a proposal refused by the Republican Congress."

COMMENT . . . . For our purposes Cannell's key requirement is clearly (3) having a large bank of questions. This permits (1) changing questions every year, and (2) maintaining a broad curriculum. It also permits, and even invites, (4) testing infrequently and (5) not focusing on test preparation. Along these lines, a 100-book nonfiction reading list would permit low-cost reader-friendly multiple-choice questions at a very, very low cost, thereby permitting a wide range of personal choice and discouraging single-test coaching.

Cannell's requirements are thriftily met in Appendix Two : Nonfiction Proper Names and Do-It-Yourself Testing. Since nonfiction books have indexes, and since indexes include proper names and page citations for those names, we can legitimately use this proper-name feature as the basis for low-cost multiple choice reading-compliance tests that readers can construct on their own - just like stepping on the scales now and then to keep our own exercise program honest.

TO CONCLUDE . . . . The increasing career importance of "high stakes" external testing has breathed new life into Hirsch's notion of Cultural Literacy and Cannell's demand for a "broad curriculum." Right now the degrees awarded by our "commodity education" system are far less trustworthy than the results of many honest, externally monitored tests.

This development has particular force in a public-record climate where the California Bar Exam results for July 2005 show correspondence-school ( Concord ) candidates (40 of them) with a far HIGHER first-time pass rate (50%) than many high-priced university law schools (e.g., UCLA and UC Berkeley).

What Hirsch and Cannell have achieved is to remind us is that LEARNING is produced by individual learners who read (and memorize) on their own, NOT necessarily by dedicated teachers and big-ticket management teams . And they are both absolutely right - as far as they go.

Unfortunately, as C.P. Snow pointed out some years back, good ideas need equally good measurement tools to validate them: a Michelson-Morley test for Einstein, a Leeuwenhoek for Galileo. I'm willing to grant that the test construction techniques set forth here are far from being the last work in cultural-literacy research (why not "civilizational literacy," by the way?) or book-based reading-achievement testing. But they're at least out in the open like Emerson's mousetrap: ready to be stepped on, and improved.

To come right out with it, the educational debate in this country is up to its neck in New Ideas. What we really need are some good tests - cheap, replicable, understandable, and honest

***

APPENDIX ONE. . . . Famous Names and Do-It-Yourself Testing

Any test question thrown at us is itself always worth questioning. Some celebrity names in crossword puzzles disappear rather quickly; others stay on and even find their way into the dictionary. Still others are clearly more familiar than others , as indicated by how well the family as a whole does on specific Jeopardy questions.

Unfortunately, since those who devise tests are invariably very reluctant to describe their premises and procedures , test takers rarely get their questions answered beyond the implicit reassurance of "Trust us - We're professionals!"

The best way to understand how test makers work (or should work) is to devise one on our own. As far as celebrity names go, our best bet is to let someone else choose them for us, namely, an authoritative biographical dictionary, in which case we can rank them in terms of how many lines appear in their entries. Other ranking criteria could include (a) the number of citations in a data base like Info-Trac, (b) the number of name-as-subject hits in a library catalog, or even (c) the number of hits on an internet check.

Once we have a ranked list of names, our next challenge is to construct test questions that also have clearly verifiable correct-incorrect answers, such as "Who was born first - A, B, or C?" or (more difficult) "Who died first?" or "Who lived longest?" Since dictionaries also list nationality and profession, another practical question is "What nationality is listed in dictionary X for Name A?" ( note how "listed" will produce a clearly verifiable correct-incorrect answer. Still another is "What profession is listed FIRST in dictionary X for Name A? Of the alternatives here, "general" turns up most frequently, along with "author."

Practically considered, we can give our test a professional appearance if we translate it into an abc (or abcde) multiple-choice format. One way to do this is to list our alternatives on a separate sheet and identify them simply as N1, N2, N3. . . . N100, etc. With this done, we can then phrase each question in general times and score with a simple abcde key, as in the following:

Q-Type 1 . . . . Please indicate which of the following (the full names appear on an accompanying list) was born FIRST. Resolve any ties alphabetically. Your alternatives are (a) N1, (b) N2, and (c) N3.

Q-Type 2 . . . . Please indicate , if any, is identified FIRST as a "general." Resolve any ties alphabetically. Your alternatives are (a) N1, (b) N2, (c) N3, (d) N4, (e) none of these .

Professional categories . . . . The prompt "general" can be replaced with a wide range of alternatives. The biographical names section at the end of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (eleventh editions) lists the following professions first under C: Cabeza de Vaca to Cambaceres: explorer, novelist, navigator, navigator, explorer, founder (of X), poet, statesman, composer, adventurer, novelist, novelist, sculptor, president (of X), dramatist, author, politician, emperor, prime minister, author, soprano, general, sculptor, philosopher, orator, proprietor (of X), theologian, chemist, jurist. As this list stands, incidentally, it's almost like a crossword-puzzle list, e.g., "a soprano beginning with CAL- , or "an explorer beginning with CAB-.

Regrouping . . . . If desired, these could be grouped under four main headings: (a) warfare and politics, (b) science and technology, (c) literature and the arts, (d) philosophy and religion. . . . This step, however, would introduce a personal-judgment factor, as opposed to the explicitly verifiable citation of dictionary evidence.

Who's Truly Who - A Ranked List of 666 Most Verifiably Famous Names

A ranked list of famous names based upon the number of lines allocated to each in Webster's New Biographical Dictionary, Merriam Webster, 1988 (WNBD). . . . Rank appears first, followed by number of entries, followed by name and other information (as presented in NEBD).

Note . . . . For convenience the names appear in groups of ten, the first two of which separate rank and number of entries by slashes. For subsequent economy, the slashes are dropped beginning with the third group. The Preface to WNBD describes it as "wholly revised and reedited," including a "greatly increased" coverage of the "non-English part of the world," while at the same time retaining a relatively "fuller and more detailed" treatment of American, Canadian, and British subjects.

Since living persons are excluded , the WNBD will probably strike some Americans as overly emphasizing Dead White British Male Parliamentarians and Politicians. But as matters stand today, the NEBD as of 2006 is clearly our most accessible and authoritative tool to use in strengthening and testing - onomastically, as it were - the civilizational literacy of Americans, young and old, in 2006. . . . The first numeral indicates the name's rank, the second numeral indicates the number of lines in its entry. Additional descriptive words (titles, etc.) that appear in NMW have been retained .

1/88 Napoleon I

2 /50 Cromwell, Oliver

3 /49 Michelangelo

4 /44 Charles II, King of England

5 /43 Washington, George

6 /37 Edward III, King of England

7 /37 Hitler, Adolf

8 /36 Franklin, Benjamin

9 /36 Milton, John

10/ 36 Scott, Sir Walter

11 /35 Charles I, King of England

12 /34 Augustus, Gaius

13 /34 Louis XIV , King of France

14 /33 Crammer, Thomas

15 /33 Hyde, Edward, 1st Earl of Clarendon

16 /33 More, Sir Thomas, Saint

17 /33 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

18 /33 Wilson , Woodrow

19 /32 Columbus, Christopher

20 /32 Drake, Sir Francis

21 /32 Edward IV, King of England

22 /32 Pitt, William, the Younger

23 /31 Churchill, Sir Winston

24 /31 Edward I, King of England

25 /31 Elisabeth I, Queen of England

26 /31 Penn, William

27 /30 Churchill, John, 1st Duke of Marlborough

28 /30 Defoe, Daniel

29 /30 Lenin, Vladmir

30 /30 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

31 /30 Swift, Jonathan

32 /29 Bismarck , Otto von

33 /29 Nelson, Horatio

34/ 29 Sun Yat-Sen

35 /29 William I, King of England , the Conqueror

36 /28 Caesar, Julius

37 /28 Henry VIII, King of England

38 /28 Raleigh, Sir Walter

39 /28 Shakespeare, William

40 /27 Balzac, Honore de

41 /27 Dryden , John

42 /27 Napoleon III

43 /27 Newman, John Henry

44 /27 Prokofiev, Sergey

45 /27 Roosevelt, Theodore

46 /27 Wagner, Richard

47 /27 Wesley , John

48 /27 Wordsworth, William

49 /26 Byron, George Gordon, Lord Byron

50 /26 Chaucer, Geoffrey

51 /26 Dante Alighieri

52 /26 Darwin, Charles

53 /26 Fredrick II, King of Prussia , the Great

54 /26 Hugo, Victor

55 /26 Mendelssohn, Felix

56 /26 Morris, William

57 /26 Muhammad

58 /26 Mussolini, Benito

59 /26 Woolsey. Thomas

60 /25 Browning, Robert

61 /25 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

62 /25 Cooper , Anthony Ashley, 1st Earl of Shaftsbury

63 /25 Emerson , Ralph Waldo

64 /25 Freud , Sigmund

65 /25 Galilei , Galileo

66 /25 Jesus

67 /25 Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

68 /25 Mill, John Stuart

69 /24 Bacon, Francis

70 /24 Beethoven, Ludwig

71 /24 Bolivar, Simon

72 /24 Burke Edmund

73 /24 Clemens, Samuel, Mark Twain

74 /24 D'Annunzio. Gabrielle

75 /24 Dickens, Charles

76 /24 Gandhi Mohandas Mahatma

77 /24 Grant, Ulysses S.

78 /24 Johnson, Samuel

79 /24 Leonardo da Vinci

80 /24 Liszt, Franz

81 /24 Massine, Leonid

82 /24 Monck , George

83 /24 Montfort, Simon de

84 /24 Peel , Sir Robert

85 /24 Pilduski, Josef

86 /24 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

87 /24 Ruskin, John

88 /24 Schilling, Johann

89 /24 Shaw, George Bernard

90 /24 Sheridan, Philip Henry

91 /24 Stanley , Sir Henry Morton

92/ 24 Wayne, Anthony, Mad Anthony

93 /24 Wellesley, Arthur, 1st Duke of Wellington

94 /23 Coke. Sir Edward

95 /23 Fremont, John Charles

96 /23 Irving , Washington

97 /23 Jefferson, Thomas

98 /23 Picasso, Pablo

99 /23 Poe, Edgar Allan

100/ 23 Rembrandt van Rijn

101/ 23 Victoria Queen of England

102 /23 Wells, Herbert George

103 /22 Chamberlain, Neville

104 /22 Chang Kai-Shek

105 /22 Howells, William Dean

106 /22 James I, King of England

107 /22 Livingstone, David

108 /22 Mao Tse-Tung , Mao Ze-Dong

109 /22 Nehru, Motilal

110 /22 Parnell, Charles

111 /22 Pretorius, Andrew

112 /22 Roosevelt, Franklin

113/ 22 Sidney, Sir Philip

114 /22 Stravinsky, Igor

115/ 22 Turner, Joseph

116 /22 Vega, Lope, de

117 /22 Wycliffe, John

118 /21 Antonius, Marcus, Mark Antony

119 /21 Chamberlain, Joseph

120 /21 Cobbett, William

121 /21 Edwards, Jonathan

122 /21 Hannibal

123 /21 Henry IV, King of France

124 /21 Ibsen , Henrik

125 /21 Irving , Sir Henry

126 /21 James , Henry

127 /21 Laplace, Pierre-Simon

128 /21 Lincoln , Abraham

129 /21 Meredith, George

130 /21 More , Hannah

131 /21 Pym , John

132 /21 Shelley, Percy Bysshe

133 /21 Stalin , Joseph

134 /21 Stevenson, Robert Louis

135 /20 Addison , Joseph

136 /20 Attaturk , Kemal

137 /20 Cervantes, Miguel de

138 /20 Charlemagne, Charles the Great

139 /20 Cicero , Marcus Tullius

140 /20 Diderot, Denis

141 /20 Disraeli , Benjamin

142 /20 Edward VII, King of England

143 /20 Goethe , Johann

144 /20 Lully , Jean-Baptiste

145 /20 Meternich, Klemens

146 /20 Owen , Robert

147 /20 Peshkov, Aleksey, Maxim Gorky

148 /20 Pitt , William the Elder

149 /20 Rhodes , Cecil

150 /20 Rupert , Prince

151 /20 Russell , John 1st Earl

152 /20 Venizelos, Eleutherios

153 /20 Walpole , Sir Richard

154 /19 Antiochus III, the Great

155 /19 Bach , J.S.

156 /19 Benso , Camillo, Count Cavour

157 /19 Coverdale , Miles

158 /19 Cowper, William

159 /19 Darius I, the Great

160 /19 Donne , John

161 /19 Gaulle , Charles de

162 /19 Groot , Hugh de, Grotius

163 /19 Hammerstein , Oscar

164 /19 Humboldt , Alexander von

165 /19 Joan of Arc

166 /19 Kant , Immanuel

167 /19 Lafayette, Marie-Joseph

168 /19 Lessing, Gottfried

169 /19 Louis XV, King of France

170 /19 Matisse , Henri

171 /19 Plessis , Armand-Jean du, Cardinal Richlieu

172 /19 Pope , Alexander

173 /19 Priestly, Joseph

174 /19 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

175 /19 Sullivan , SirArthur

176 /19 Voltaire , Francois-Marie Aroet

177 /19 Whitman, Walt

178 /19 Wilkes , John

179 /19 Wilkinson, James

180 /19 William I , Stadtholder of the Netherlands the Silent

181 /19 Zola , Emile

182 /18 Blucher, Gebhard

183 /18 Calvin , John

184 /18 Carlyle , Thomas

185 /18 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

186 /18 Cortes , Hernando

187 /18 Cromwell, Thomas

188 /18 Edward, Prince of Wales, the Black Prince

189 /18 Fox , Charles

190 /18 Handel, George

191 /18 James II , King of England

192 /18 Lomonsov, Mikhail

193 /18 Louis-Philippe, King of France

194 /18 Mehmed II , the Conqueror

195 /18 Middleton , Thomas

196 /18 Millais , Sir John

197 /18 Montague, Charles 1st Earl of Halifax

198 /18 Montessori , Maria

199 /18 Murray , Gilbert

200 /18 Nansen , Fridtjof

201/ 18 Paine, Thomas

202 /18 Plato

203 /18 Pole , Reginald,

204 /18 Spencer, Herbert

205 /18 Thackeray, William

206 /18 Webster , Noah

207 /18 Whistler , James McNeil

208 /18 Wilde , Oscar

209 /17 Aristotle

210 /17 Athnasius, Saint

211 /17 Belloc , Hilaire

212 /17 Bentham, Jeremy

213 /17 Boccaccio, Giovanni

214 /17 Brahms , Johannes

215 /17 Canning , George

216 /17 Carnegie , Andrew

217 /17 Clive , Robert

218 /17 Constantine I, the Great

219 /17 Cook , James, Captain Cook

220 /17 Davis , Jefferson

221 /17 Dickenson, John

222 /17 Diocletian , Gaius, Roman Emperor

223 /17 Edward , Anglo-Saxon king of England , the Confessor

224 /17 Eisenhower , Dwight

225 /17 Gutenberg , Johannes

226 /17 Henry II, King of England

227 /17 Jackson, Andrew

228 /17 Jung , Carl

229 /17 Lee, Robert Edward

230 /17 Linne, Carl von Linnaeus

231 /17 Louis XVI, King of France

232 /17 Margaret of Anjou

233 /17 Molotov , Vyachelav

234 /17 Philip II, King of France, Philip Augustus

235 /17 Philip II , King of Spain

236 /17 Philip IV ,King of France , the Fair

237 /17 Pound , Ezra

238 /17 Prester, John

239 /17 Schonberg, Arnold

240 /17 Sherman , William Tecumseh

241 /17 Stephen , King of England

242 /17 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilich

243 /17 Thomson , William, 1st Baron Kelvin

244 /17 Welles , Orson

245 /17 William III, Stadtholder of the Netherlands and King of England

246 /17 Wright , Frank Lloyd

247 /17 Wright, Wilbur and Orville

248 /16 Abelard

249 /16 Albertus Magnus

250 /16 Alexander II, Czar of Russia

251 /16 Alexander III , the Great

252 /16 Aquinas , Saint Thomas

253 /16 Bell , Alexander Graham

254 /16 Bernini, Gian/ Giovanni

255 /16 Boyle , Robert

256 /16 Bulow , Bernhard von

257 /16 Catherine II, the Great

258 /16 Caxton , William

259 /16 Cobden , Richard

260 /16 Cocteau , Jean

261 /16 Conrad , Joseph

262 /16 Cornwallis, Charles, 1st Marquis

263 /16 Curzon , George, 1st Baron

264 /16 Dostoyevsky , Fyodor

265 /16 Douglass , Fredrick

266 /16 Dudley , Robert, 1st Earl of Leicester

267 /16 Duns Scotus

268 /16 Eden , Sir Anthony

269 /16 Edison , Thomas Alva

270 /16 Edward VIII, King of England

271 /16 Einstein , Albert

272 /16 Farragut , David

273 /16 Fletcher , John

274 /16 George III, King of England

275 /16 Gershwin , George

276 /16 Gluck , Christoph

277 /16 Gregory VII, Saint

278 /16 Gustavus II , King of Sweden

279 /16 Hamilton , Alexander

280 /16 Hauptmann, Gerhart

281 /16 Henry VI, King of England

282 /16 Hung Hsiu-Chuan, Chinese religious leader

283 /16 Huxley , Thomas Henry

284 /16 Jeanneret, Charles le Corbusier

285 /16 Kaganovich , Lazar

286 /16 Kipling , Rudolf

287 /16 Laban , Rudolf

288 /16 Marie Antoinette

289 /16 Melanchthon, Philipp

290 /16 Mommsen , Theodore

291 /16 Montmorency-Bouteville, Francois-Henri

292 /16 Moore , George

293 /16 Moore , Thomas

294 /16 Nero , Roman Emperor

295 /16 Neville, Richard , Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker

296 /16 Pasteur , Louis

297 /16 Peary , Robert

298 /16 Peter I , Czar of Russia , the Great

299 /16 Petrarch , Francesco

300 /16 Selden , John

301 /16 Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha

302 /16 Smith , Joseph

303 /16 Southey, Thomas

304 /16 Strindberg, August

305 /16 Sullivan , John

306 /16 Vaughn Williams, Ralph

307 /16 Vecelli Tiziano, Titian

308 /16 Wallenstein , Albrecht

309 /16 Wieland , Christoph

310 /15 Akbar , the Great

311 /15 Alexander I, Czar of Russia

312 /15 Ambrose , Saint

313 /15 Attila , the Scourge of God

314 /15 Auden , Wystan Hugh

315 /15 Balfour , Arthur

316 /15 Brecht , Bertholt

317 /15 Briand , Aristide

318 /15 Britten , Benjamin

319 /15 Bryan , W illiam Jennings

320 /15 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro

321 /15 Canute , the Great

322 /15 Casaubon, Isaac

323 /15 Charles , Duke of Burgundy , Charles the Bold

324 /15 Charles VII , King of France

325 /15 Chekhov , Anton

326 /15 Chopin , Fredric

327 /15 Christian IX, King of Denmark

328 /15 Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt

329 /15 Cooper , James Fennimore

330 /15 Davenant, Sir William

331 /15 Diaz deVivar, Rodrigo, El Cid

332 /15 Douglas, Stephen , the Little Giant

333 /15 Eleanor , Queen of England and Acquitaine

334 /15 Eugene , Prince of Savoy

335 /15 Francis I, King of France

336 /15 Fredrick William , the Great Elector

337 /15 Freneau , Philip

338 /15 Galsworthy, John

339 /15 Garcia Lorca, Federico

340 /15 Gide , Andre

341 /15 Giraldi Giambattista, Cinthio

342 /15 Gladstone , William Ewart

343 /15 Gordon , Charles, Chinese Gordon

344 /15 Gossec , Francois

345 /15 Grimm , Jacob and Wilhelm

346 /15 Harun al Rashid

347 /15 Hastings, Warren

348 /15 Hayden , Franz

349 /15 Hearst , William Randoph

350 /15 Hemholtz, Hermann

351 /15 Henry , Patrick

352 /15 Henry III, King of England

353 /15 Hobbes , Thomas

354 /15 Holmes , Oliver Wendell, the Older

355 /15 Houston , Samuel

356 /15 Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester

357 /15 Ibn Saud

358 /15 John, King of England , Lackland

359 /15 Kandinsky, Wassily

360 /15 Kokoschka , Oskar

361 /15 Leibniz , Gottfried

362 /15 Louis XVIII, King of France

363 /15 MacCleish , Archibald

364 /15 Marlowe , Christopher

365 /15 Masefield , John

366 /15 Mazzini , Giuseppe

367 /15 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig

368 /15 Mill , James

369 /15 Morris, Gouveneur

370 /15 Nietzsche, Fredric

371 /15 Ockham , William of Occam

372 /15 Photius , Patriarch of Constantinople

373 /15 Pius II, Pope, Aeneas Sylvius

374 /15 Porter , Cole

375 /15 Ptolemy I, Ptolemy Soter

376 /15 Pushkin, Aleksandr

377 /15 Rameau , Jean-Philippe

378 /15 Robespierre, Maximilen

379 /15 Rogers , Richard

380 /15 Rossetti , Dante Gabriel

381 /15 Sandburg, Carl

382 /15 Seneca , Lucius, the Younger

383 /15 Shostakovich , Dimitry

384 /15 Smollett , Tobias

385 /15 Steele , Sir Richard

386 /15 Strauss , Richard

387 /15 Tallyrand, Perigord

388 /15 Theodosius the Great

389 /15 Thompson Benjamin, Count Rumford

390 /15 Trajan , Roman Emperor , Germanicus

391 /15 Trumbull , John, American painter

392 /15 Vanderbilt , Cornelius

393 /15 Wallace , Alfred

394 /15 Webb , Beatrice

395 /15 William I, Emperor of Germany

396 /15 William IV, King of England , the Sailor King

397 /15 Williams , Roger

398 /14 Agassiz , Louis

399 /14 Alcott , Amos Bronson

400 /14 Ashurbanipal

401 /14 Berlioz , Hector

402 /14 Bjornson, Bjornstjierne

403 /14 Burns , Robert

404 /14 Cabot , John

405 /14 Calder , Alexander

406 /14 Cardano, Geronimo

407 /14 Chamberlain, Sir Austen

408 /14 Charles , Archduke of Austria

409 /14 Chateaubriand , Francois

410 /14 Chesterton , Gilbert Keith

411 /14 Cochrane , Thomas, Lord

412 /14 Danton, Georges

413 /14 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex

414 /14 Digby , Sir Kenelm

415 /14 Drayton, Michael

416 /14 du Pont de Nemours , Pierre

417 /14 Duffy , Sir Charles

418 /14 Eliot , Sir John

419 /14 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor

420 /14 Ferdinand II , King of Aragon

421 /14 Franco , Francisco

422 /14 Fulton , Robert

423 /14 Garibaldi, Guiseppe

424 /14 Gautier , Theophile

425 /14 Hawthorne, Nathaniel

426 /14 Henry IV , King of England

427 /14 Hogarth , William

428 /14 Hooke , Robert

429 /14 Hsuan-yeh, Chinese Emperor

430 /14 Hunter , John

431 /14 Hus , Jan

432 /14 Huygens, Christian

433 /14 Ibn al-Arabi al Andalus

434 /14 Ibrahim Pasha

435 /14 Ignatius of Loyola, Saint

436 /14 Ivan IV , Czar of Russia , the Terrible

437 /14 Jacoba , Countess of Holland

438 /14 James III, King of Scotland

439 /14 Jaspers, Karl

440 /14 John of Austria , Don Juan

441 /14 Josephus Flavius

442 /14 Kemal, Mehmed

443 /14 Kepler , Johannes

444 /14 Kettering, Charles

445 /14 Kiesler , Fredrick

446 /14 Kleist , Heinrich von

447 /14 Klopstock, Freidrich

448 /14 Kotzebue , August

449 /14 Kung Chiu, Confucius

450 /14 Kuo Mojo

451 /14 Lagrange , Joseph-Louis

452 /14 Lamarck , Jean-Baptiste

453 /14 Lamb , Charles

454 /14 Lang , Andrew

455 /14 Llull , Ramon, Raymond Lully

456 /14 Mantegna, Andres

457 /14 Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor

458 /14 Maria Theresa

459 /14 Marin , Thomas

460 /14 Marston, John

461 /14 Marvell , Andrew

462 /14 Marx , Karl

463 /14 Massinger, Philip

464 /14 Mauriac , Francois

465 /14 Maurras , Charles

466 /14 Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico

467 /14 Mithradates VI , Eupator , the Great

468 /14 Moliere , Jean-Baptiste

469 /14 Montherlant, Henri-Marie

470 /14 Mordaunt , Charles

471 /14 Morgan , John Pierpont

472 /14 Morse , Samuel

473 /14 Muir , John

474 /14 Ney , Michel

475 /14 O'Connell, Daniel, the Liberator

476 /14 O'Donovan , Michael, Frank O'Conner

477 /14 Pascal , Blaise

478 /14 Pepys , Samuel

479 /14 Pessoa , Fernando

480 /14 Petrie , Sir Flinders

481 /14 Petty , Sir William

482 /14 Philip . Landgrave of Hesse , the Magnanimous

483 /14 Pirandello , Luigi

484 /14 Pitty-FitzMaurice, Henry

485 /14 Poincare , Raymond

486 /14 Porter , William Sidney , O Henry

487 /14 Quiller-Couch , Sir Arthur

488 /14 Rambert , Dame Marie

489 /14 Sadat , Anwar

490 /14 Seleucus I

491 /14 Solon

492 /14 St. John , Henry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

493 /14 Steuben , Baron Friedrich von

494 /14 Stevens , John

495 /14 Stewart , Lord James

496 /14 Stowe , Harriet Beecher

497 /14 Strauss , Johann, the Waltz King

498 /14 Swedenborg , Emanuel

499 /14 Theoderic , the Great

500 /14 Theotokopulos, Domenikos, El Greco

501 /14 Tiberius , 2nd Roman Emperor

502 /14 Tieck , Ludwig

503 /14 Tolstoy, Lev, Leo

504 /14 Trotsky , Leon

505 /14 Velasquez, Diego

506 /14 Verdi , Giuseppe

507 /14 Walker, William, the filibuster

508 /14 Walpole , Horace

509 /14 Wheelock Eleaszar

510 /14 Whitefield George

511 /14 William II King of England Rufus

512 /14 Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville

513 /14 Xavier , Saint Francis

514 /14 Zangwill , Israel

515 /14 Zinoyiev , Grigory

516 /13 Abdul Hamid II

517 /13 Alexander I, Prince

518 /13 Alexander VI, Pope

519 /13 Alfred the Great

520 /13 Arnold, Benedict

521 /13 Augustine, Saint

522 /13 Baker , Sir Samuel

523 /13 Blake , William

524 /13 Brougham, Henry

525 /13 Bruno , Giordano

526 /13 Buchanan, George

527 /13 Carteret , Sir George

528 /13 Cecil , William

529 /13 Chambers, Sir Robert

530 /13 Charles XII, King of Sweden

531 /13 Charles Edward, the Young Pretender

532 /13 Chatterton , Thomas

533 /13 Cohan , George M.

534 /13 Coligny, Gaspard II, Admiral

535 /13 Conde , Louis II, the Great Conde

536 /13 Cruikshank , George

537 /13 Dalton , John

538 /13 Daly , Augustin

539 /13 Dampier, William

540 /13 Darrow Clarence

541 /13 Davy Sir Humphry

542 /13 Dawes Charles

543 /13 Dekker Thomas

544 /13 Desmoulins Camille

545 /13 Dewey John

546 /13 Douglas Gavin

547 /13 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

548 /13 Dumas , Alexander Dumas, Pere

549 /13 Eliot , Thomas Stearns

550 /13 Emin Pasha, Mehmed

551 /13 Erasmus , Desiderius

552 /13 Eyck, Hubert van

553 /13 Faraday, Michael

554 /13 Faulkner , William

555 /13 Francis of Meyronnes

556 /13 Fredrick II, Holy Roman Emperor

557 /13 Fredrick William III, King of Prussia

558 /13 Gamow , George

559 /13 Gascoigne, George

560 /13 Gates , Horatio

561 /13 Gaugin, Paul

562 /13 Giotto

563 /13 Granville-Barker, Harley

564 /13 Griffith , Arthur

565 /13 Hadrian , Roman Emperor

566 /13 Hearn , Lafcadio

567 /13 Hecht , Ben

568 /13 Hegel, Georg

569 /13 Henry , Prince of Portugal , the Navigator

570 /13 Henry VII, King of England

571 /13 Heraclius , Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire

572 /13 Herder , Johannes

573 /13 Hindemith, Paul

574 /13 Hood , Thomas

575 /13 Howard, Thomas II, 3rd Duke of Norfolk

576 /13 Howard , Thomas III, 4th Duke of Norfolk

577 /13 Hung-Li , Chinese Emperor, Chien Lung

578 /13 Innocent III , Pope

579 /13 Ives , Charles

580 /13 John Maurice, Count of Nassau , the Brazilian

581 /13 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy

582 /13 Jonson , Ben

583 /13 Knox , John

584 /13 Koch , Robert

585 /13 Komensky Jan, Comenius

586 /13 Langley , Samuel

587 /13 Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent

588 /13 Lawrence , David Herbert

589 /13 Lawrence , Thomas Edward Shaw

590 /13 Lee , Richard Henry

591 /13 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor

592 /13 Leveson-Gower Granville, George

593 /13 Lewes , George Henry

594 /13 Lewis , Wyndham

595 /13 Locke , John

596 /13 Lowell , James Russell

597 /13 Lubbock, Sir John

598 /13 Lubitsch , Ernst

599 /13 Lucas van Leyden

600 /13 MacArthur, Douglas

601 /13 Madison , James

602 /13 Marot , Clement

603 /13 Marshall, John

604 /13 Martinozzi, Gyorgy

605 /13 Masaryk , Tomas

606 /13 Mason , George

607 /13 Massena, Andre

608 /13 Mather , Cotten

609 /13 Maurice of Saxony

610 /13 Mead , Margaret

611 /13 Mencken, Henry

612 /13 Minamoto , Yoritomo

613 /13 Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides

614 /13 Moutbatten , Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma

615 /13 Mussorsky , Modest Petrovich

616 /13 Nabokov , Vladmir

617 /13 Nash , Thomas

618 /13 Necker, Jacques

619 /13 Noyes , John Humphrey

620 /13 Oates , Titus

621 /13 Offenbach, Jacques

622 /13 Patrick , Saint

623 /13 Perry , Matthew

624 /13 Pinero , Sir Arthur Wing

625 /13 Piozzi , Hester, Mrs. Thrale

626 /13 Pizarro , Francisco

627 /13 Prynne , William

628 /13 Pui ,. last Emperor of China, Henry Pu Yi

629 /13 Pusey , Edward

630 /13 Radek , Karl

631 /13 Ramsay, James Andrew

632 /13 Raphael , Sanzio

633 /13 Ravel , Joseph-Maurice

634 /13 Ray , John

635 /13 Reynolds, Sir Joshua

636 /13 Richard III, King of England

637 /13 Root , Elihu

638 /13 Rosecrans, William

639 /13 Rossini , Giocchino

640 /13 San Martin, Jose

641 /13 Satie , Erik

642 /13 Schlegel, Fredrich von

643 /13 Schurz , Carl

644 /13 Sennacherib

645 /13 Skelton , John

646 /13 Smith , John

647 /13 Soult , Nicholas

648 /13 Stanley, Edward George

649 /13 Suarez , Francisco

650 /13 Swinburne, Algernon

651 /13 Szilard , Leo

652 /13 Taft, William Howard

653 /13 Temple , Henry John

654 /13 Tesla , Nikola

655 /13 Tilden , Samuel

656 /13 Tokugawa Ieyasu

657 /13 Tyndall , John

658 /13 Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy

659 /13 Webster , Daniel

660 /13 Wesley , Charles

661 /13 Williams, Tennessee

662 /13 Winthrop , John

663 /13 Wotton , Sir Henry

664 /13 Young , Brigham

665 /13 Yuan Shih-Kai

666 /13 Zuckermayer, Carl

***

APPENDIX TWO . . . . Nonfiction Proper Names and Index-Based Do-It-Yourself Testing

Fiction for fun and nonfiction for serious thought - the equation is turning many young Americans into compulsive note-scribblers and highlighters. It's also slowing their overall reading speed down, to the degree that very few high school students in California are able to meet their state's official requirement (on the books, at least) of a million words read independently each year over and beyond specific classroom assignments.

Fortunately, most nonfiction books are actually designed to be read almost as fast as fiction. A nonfiction book's table of contents, for example, gives us a snapshot of what lies ahead. Its index is even more valuable, especially the number of proper names that we can recognize.

Proper names and reading difficulty . . . . Some years back, for example, I unwisely tackled Anton Dvornik's "The Slavs in European History," whose index lists over a thousand very strange and unfamiliar Slavic names, the equivalent of two bearded strangers on each page. Apart from a humbling sense of my own ignorance, the hours spent reading this excellent study (a Christopher Award winner, incidentally) were far less productive than they might have been if my Slavic-names vocabulary had been more powerful.

As far as proper names go, familiarity breeds reading mastery, not contempt. This means that recognizing a lot of familiar proper names in the index to a nonfiction book signals its readability to most of us, if not its literary quality.

It also means, by way of encouraging faster reading, that a reader's memory can be jogged by asking him or her to identify which names appear most frequently in a specific book. A nonfiction book's index, after all, lists the number of times each proper name appears in the text itself. If we've read Anthony Arthur's "Literary Feuds" (St. Martins), for example, the following test will measure how well we remember its basic content.

A Nonfiction Book-Based Proper Names Test . . . . Based on your reading of "Literary Feuds," by Anthony Arthur, please indicate your personal recollection of its content by identifying on an a /b basis which of the following pairs gets MORE attention in the text (this is verifiable via the number of page citations listed for each in the book's index)). . . . Q1: Adams, Henry , OR Anderson, Sherwood. . . . Q2: Berlin , Isaiah, OR Birkerts, Sven . . . Q3: Clinton, Hilary , OR Cowley, Malcolm. . . . Q4: Einstein, Albert , OR Emerson, Ralph Waldo . . Q5: Harte, Bret, OR Hawthorne , Nathaniel .

Comment . . . . This is a specific-book test, not a general knowledge test. Generally considered, the overall relative importance of each name is today signaled by its current number of Internet hits for each name. Such a check for 10/13/05 indicates substantial popular disparity between each pair: Adams (1,020,000) versus Anderson (122,000). . . . Berlin (40,000) versus Birkerts (3,950). . . . Clinton (802,000) versus Cowley (21,000). . . . Einstein (991,000) versus Emerson (154,000). . . . Harte (26,000) versus Hawthorne (121,000).

In contrast, the relative importance of each name in a specific book, as indicated by its number of page citations will often not correspond at all to its Internet status. Here are our pairs again, this time with their number of page citations in the index to "Literary Feuds": Adams (2), Anderson (9); Berlin (1), Birkerts (3); Clinton (1), Cowley (9); Einstein (1), Emerson (7); Harte (35), Hawthorne (2).

Test performance and reader-encouragement . . . . On the basis of this contrast between in-the-book importance and Internet importance, it is highly likely that readers who have actually read this particular book, will do better on our book-based proper names test than will readers, even highly educated ones, who had not read it. Even better, since factual minutiae are avoided, it's also highly likely that a test like this will both encourage high speed recreational reading and help to break slow move-the-lips reading habits that many students today acquire in high school and never lose

It should be emphasized here that this kind of test permits many low-cost variations. The number of alternatives, for example, can be extended from two to three or more. Also the alternatives can be listed on a separate sheet and identified as A1, A2, A3, etc., thereby permitting a separate question sheet and word-processing economies (index-scanning, deletion of page-citation numbers, etc.

Most important, the personal-best reader can construct this kind of test in advance, read the book, and then take it as a way of proving to himself or herself that speed reading does not rule out getting plenty of intellectual benefit from a nonfiction book - measurably so.

CAVEAT . . . . Teachers should be cautious and sly in using this kind of test. Clever students are apt study the names instead of read the book itself. Practically considered, page-position sequence tests are still the most cost-effective way of ascertaining whether a student has read an assigned book and paid a reasonably amount of attention to each page.

TO CONCLUDE . . . . Speed reading and proper-name vocabulary growth are natural partners. As Frank Smith has put it, we comprehend what we read because we already know 50% of what's on the page in front of us, including proper names and allusions. And conversely , we expand our knowledge of proper names by encountering them again and again in nonfiction books intended for the general reader. Most literary nonfiction prizewinners fall into this category, just as most of them consistently cite the same thousand culturally important proper names (Caesar, Julius, and Churchill, Winston, still have impressive index visibility, I have noticed).

And there's more. . . . Call it Alzheimer's or pre-senile dementia, going blank on proper names is, or is going to be, a major worry for all Americans, especially after we reach the age of fifty. Just like a sense of physical space, our awareness of general-knowledge proper names and their relatedness can help us stay on track in the real world, as opposed to sliding down in a swamp of personal fantasies and confusion.

Working crossword puzzles is of course a good antidote to proper-name confusion. But reading quality nonfiction books, including biographies and history, is even better, if only for the reason that it challenges our attention span and memory power in the process. The more we do it, as long as our eyes hold out, the better we get - including our speed, comprehension, and retentiveness. Speed reading and proper-name awareness - the combination can, and should, be a winner today for many Americans, young and old.