Americans Fail History Exam

MARINA DEL RAY, CA--(Marketwire - October 9, 2009) - Don't complain to Anthony Pour about the economy, failed foreign policy or the lack of healthcare coverage for many Americans. He'll likely just throw a history book at you.

And from the looks of a recent study, most Americans need it. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute's National Civic Literacy Board recent Civic Literacy Report found that more than 71 percent of Americans would fail a basic test on American history.

Pour - international journalist and author of the spy novel "The Undercover Gentleman," (www.pourbooks.com) -- believes that it is this lack of emphasis on history that dooms our country to the rest of the world's most fatal mistakes.

"Intentionally or not, history is no longer a priority in American schools and what most folks know about the extinct civilizations and formidable empires of the past is what they learned from simple-minded Hollywood epics," he added. "Only a few diligent students of historical facts still realize that it was not the titillating sexual depravity, intrigue and murder inside imperial palaces that sells pseudo-historical movies, but the dull, all-consuming epidemic of entitlement mentality in the streets that would, in the long run, undermine the glory and prosperity of any empire and turn a grand state into an impoverished bunch of blundering little people."

Pour, who lives in Marina del Rey, California but holds a dual citizenship in the Principality of Liechtenstein in Europe, uses his international perspective to formulate his simple hypothesis on what might help the U.S. emerge from its troubles.

"In California, I recently visited a friend of a friend, a single mother living from paycheck to paycheck," he said. "She was truly one of the unsung millions of working stiffs like me that politicians love to depict as wallowing in a morass of oppression and dire need. Yet her house was spic-and-span, complete with a couple of handsome, well-behaved, well-dressed, well-educated teenagers -- and all that without a penny of a charitable or other politically correct assistance. In her living room was a handwritten sign that read 'no whining.' If we had, say, 300 million more like her, we'd be on easy street."

Anthony Pour

Anthony Pour is an acclaimed international journalist and author. He has been writing for newspapers, magazines and television both in California and Europe for more than twenty years.

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