Fully updated for the twenty-first century, The New First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy gathers together all of the essential facts that youngsters should have at their fingertips for school success. The child education expert E. D. Hirsch, Jr., cuts through the wealth of information available today to highlight those terms that a child should be familiar with by the end of sixth grade. With nearly 3,000 concise definitions, including 250 new entries (Harry Potter, centaurs, northern lights, and World Series, to name a few), this popular sourcebook makes finding information easy. Here is everything your child needs to know to be culturally literate in 21 different subject areas, from mythology to literature to U.S. history to science and technology, and much more.

Preface to the Third Edition

This new, updated edition reflects important changes that have occurred in the world since 1991, changes in history, science, and the arts that have become part of our common awareness, such as Harry Potter, the Persian Gulf War, El Nino, global warming, DVDs, laptop computers, and the recently named Southern Ocean.
Most of the entries that appeared in the 1989 edition still appear here, illustrating how durable literate culture is and how valid was the idea that gave rise to this book: nal›