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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following does Obama appoint to lead the EPA?

2. Which of the following does Obama note performing in Michelle’s American music series?

3. How many Senators vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court Justice?

4. Which of the following nations signed on to the Kyoto Protocol?

5. Approximately how many jobs does Obama note are gained in the March 2010 jobs report?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why, per Elie Wiesel, did the inmates at Auschwitz teach their children math, poetry, and history?

2. What effects does Obama note the stresses of his second year in office have on his senior staffers?

3. What does Obama describe as the “Michelle Effect” in the memoir?

4. To what does the “cap-and-trade” system of greenhouse gas reduction refer?

5. What reasons does Obama give for opposing repealing DADT via executive order?

6. What “hard truths” does Obama note hoping to address in the “Muslim speech” (358-59)?

7. To what does the term “dignified transfer” refer in the memoir?

8. When presented with notes about gender discrimination within his White House, what steps does Obama take to address the matter?

9. What reasons does Obama give for approving of some of his predecessor’s counterterrorism initiatives?

10. What justification does Obama offer for sightseeing on foreign diplomatic visits?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider Obama’s musing:

"If only the decision on Afghanistan was a matter of resolve, I thought—just will and steel and fire. That had been true for Lincoln as he tried to save the Union, and for FDR after Pearl Harbor, with America and the world facing a mortal threat from expansionist powers. In such circumstances, you harnessed all you had to mount a total war. But in the here and now, the threats we faced—deadly but stateless terrorist networks; otherwise feeble rogue nations out to get weapons of mass destruction—were real but not existential, and so resolve without foresight was worse than useless. It led us to fight the wrong wars and careen down rabbit holes. It made us administrators of inhospitable terrain and bred more enemies than we killed. Because of our unmatched power, America had choices about what and when and how to fight. To claim otherwise, to insist that our safety and our standing in the world required us to do all that we could for as long as we could in every single instance, was an abdication of moral responsibility, the certainty it offered a comforting lie (439)."

Given the history of the United States, how correct an assertion is that of the passage? What evidence suggests that it is / not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Many sources attest to the presence of A Promised Land on the New York Times best-seller list. Assuming that sales figures reflect popularity, what accounts for the popularity of the memoir? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

In the preface, Obama makes the following parenthetical remark: “I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness” (xiii). Does experience support the position? How so or not?

(see the answer keys)

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