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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. What Swiss-French writer pointed out Napoleon's seduction?

2. When did the Rabindranath Tagore tour the United States?

3. When did Voltaire die?

4. In the Prologue, what did Karl Mannheim say that people were waiting for?

5. When did George Santayana leave the United States for Europe?

Short Essay Questions

1. In October of 1749, where was Diderot and why was he there?

2. In "Clearing a Space," what was the purpose of history and how did it become sanitized?

3. In "Loving Oneself Through Others," why did Rousseau become an outsider?

4. In "Clearing a Space," whose ideas need to be understood and then dismantled?

5. In the Prologue what are many themes of the global unrest that the author has seen?

6. In the Prologue, what did Mikhail Bakunin say about the revolutionist?

7. In "Clearing a Space," what did Fukuyama and Zakaria have to say about Western civilization and world development?

8. In "Loving Oneself Through Others," what did Adam Smith envision?

9. In the Prologue, what was the ideological orthodoxy after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989?

10. In "Clearing a Space," what did Timothy McVeigh write about a demagogic present in 1992?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Voltaire and Rousseau had differing viewpoints, especially regarding modernity. How would you describe the viewpoints of Voltaire and of Rousseau? How were their ideas about wealth and materialism different? What did their differences reveal about the meaning of modernity?

Essay Topic 2

Mishra believes that political revolutions have awakened the masses. How have political revolutions awakened the masses? What desires did political revolutions stir in the masses? How successful have political revolutions been in fulfilling the desires they have stirred? What have been the results of political revolutions?

Essay Topic 3

Global capitalism sets up expectations of what life will be like, especially for the downtrodden. What do people expect when capitalism is implemented? What mismatch is there between expectations and reality? Why are people disappointed at the results of capitalism? How does this create tendencies for violence? What is revealed about the results of global capitalism because of the mismatch between what people expect from life and the speed in which life changes?

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