What?

Do to brain functioning constraints and severe lack of perceptive tolerance adaptive ability the corpus of my currently scanned text remains unfulfilled in the viewing sense. Or, in simplified words, I do not understand my American Heritage reading.

Example: “They reflected a broad diversity of conceptions and purposes—everything from setting up mercantile trading operations to building feudalistic seigniories to providing land for England’s dispossessed. Religious sanctuary lent a certain coherence to some of the colonies, especially those in New England, but Puritanism itself, or more broadly the dissenting tradition, was not the sole guiding influence of colonial development. There were many others.”

I understood, “There were many others.” Now my question is why does the author feel that he has to make the text so thick that it is practically unreadable? If he were to start the book by simply stating, “I am smart, but I’m going to dumb this down for you thick headed students,” I would believe him and out of gratitude add him to my Christmas card list. Instead, I am left wondering what he is getting at, rereading a sentence about ten times over before I get what he is saying. And the problem is the thickness (mine and his) gets worse the further in I get.

By the end of the chapter I am weeding out phrases I understand, like “England is an important key to the puzzle,” and “In America, they argued, the ‘best’ was really the best.” From these two sentences I have veered into my own area of thought which doesn’t include our founding fathers such as John Locke or John Calvin. Rather, these two sentences have led me to conclude that they are talking about Easter candy, Cadbury eggs in particular, and that the vote is unanimous in America that English candy really is best.

The problem lies in the tests. If it was simply for my own reading I would recommend this book to anyone, who doesn’t love a good debate about delicious candy? But ultimately I will be tested on my knowledge of these facts and I can almost guarantee that my sorts of questions won’t be on the test. I will cross my fingers that my teacher (he didn’t write the book) will have come to the same conclusion about Cadbury, but I won’t hold my breath. Not everybody likes chocolate.