Customer Reviews

A Civilization Primer

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Most of the primer covers what a student ought to have learned in high school History or social studies classes. Unfortunately, most high schools tend to neglect these basic concepts.

Therefore the primer can prove helpful to the College Freshman dreading his or her World Civilization classes. Likewise, faculty could avoid many headaches and sighs by recommending this book for their courses.

Covering the basics is indeed a dirty job, and someone had to do it. Anson is precise, topical and readable. A definite must-have for the College-bound student with a weakness in History or Social Science.

I suppose this modest pamphlet might be of use to the unfortunate person who managed to get through 12 grades without one decent social studies class. But check out that price tag! Nearly $70 new! A perfect example of what is wrong with the way text books are produced and sold in this country today. The producers market to, not the consumer, but to the departments or instructors who specify the required materials for the courses. In the years since I last went to college in the 1970's there has been an increasingly cavalier disregard for the actual consumer, the student. In earlier times there were occasional abuses (one extreme example my mother encountered at UC Berkeley was a set of rather poorly written texts at very high cost for the time, just after WWII, in a deliberate effort to cash in on the GI bill that would buy required texts for veteran students, but this was rare. Now you would think that every student must be on the GI bill, but alas most are on student loans not free money so they are not only getting ripped off but paying compound interest on the loss as well) usually where the instructor was also the author but on the whole textbooks were reasonably priced somewhere near ordinary commercial books of comparable quality. Since then the producers (text book companies and probably the authors in many cases) have been piled on expense to market their way onto required text lists (or using that and their other favorite of the cost of low volume, the reverse economy of scale, to justify simple greed) and passing that expense directly to the student. This is not the market in action because the consumer often has no practical alternative apart from dropping out of school, the buying decision is made for the consumer by another party with no skin in the game, or worse, the prospect of receiving royalties or an outright kick-back, a clear and corrupt conflict of interest. The prices of text books have risen to absurd levels in many cases, such as this one, where the object is truly of little objective value as a book standing alone outside of the educational system. Some very shoddy work is being palmed off at extortionate prices these days as I have seen reviewing my son's books. At least most of the books I had to buy where at least decent reference books after the class was done. Paying beyond top dollar for such rubbish adds insult to injury, and it goes on all the time now.

It is an outrage and it is time for students to stand up to it.