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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 23, Souvenirs of a Journalist, Chapter 24, Criticism.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was Mencken's opinion of New Deal programs?
(a) They were disastrous in practice.
(b) They were theoretically dubious, but worked okay in practice.
(c) They were great boons to mankind.
(d) They imbued average Americans with a rugged individual spirit.

2. Who did the Black Plague mostly kill off, according to Mencken?
(a) Monarchs of high intelligence.
(b) Proletarians of low intelligence.
(c) Proletarians of high intelligence.
(d) Monarchs of low intelligence.

3. What is Mencken's opinion of the telephone?
(a) They are necessary, and have greatly benefited mankind.
(b) They are necessary, but they have caused more harm than good.
(c) They are unnecessary, but are fun to play around with.
(d) They are unnecessary and harmful.

4. What subject does Mencken begin his volume with?
(a) The horrors of the carnival.
(b) The automobile.
(c) The mysteries of women.
(d) The nature of man.

5. What central critique does Mencken have for teachers of his day?
(a) They too often making learning an automatic process.
(b) They simply teach, and leave it to students to figure out the lesson.
(c) They are given entirely too much respect in society.
(d) They are overpaid and underworked.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which is NOT one of Mencken's view of humankind as expressed in Chapter 1?

2. What does the "believer" type of person inevitably do?

3. Mencken reports on a boxing with which famed boxer?

4. Punishment for crime is too often what, according to Mencken?

5. Why is Mencken unable to embrace democratic political theory, as he himself states it in Chapter 9?

(see the answer key)

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