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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Introduction & Chapter 1.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word used in the book’s Introduction means allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass?
(a) Pellucid.
(b) Translucent.
(c) Reflective.
(d) Irradiate.

2. What western city does the author describe “with exotic palms and golf-course lawns and a five-hundred-foot fountain and an artificial surf” in the Introduction?
(a) Phoenix, Arizona.
(b) Albuquerque, New Mexico.
(c) Reno, Nevada.
(d) Bakersfield, California.

3. When was the revised and updated version of Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water published?
(a) 1979.
(b) 1999.
(c) 1985.
(d) 1993.

4. John Wesley Powell figured that if you evenly distributed all of the surface water flowing between the Columbia River and the Gulf of Mexico, you would have what?
(a) A desert almost indistinguishable from what is there today.
(b) Lush green pastures as far as the eye can see.
(c) Astounding yields on farms covering a quarter of the country.
(d) The most productive agricultural system the world has ever seen.

5. What river is known as the River of No Return?
(a) The Snake River.
(b) The Owyhee River.
(c) The Salmon River.
(d) The Yellowstone River.

Short Answer Questions

1. When was John Wesley Powell born?

2. When did Francisco Vásquez de Coronado set out on horseback from Mexico with a couple of hundred men, driving into the uncharted North, according to the author in Chapter One?

3. For what organization was Marc Reisner a staff writer from 1972 to 1979?

4. Which Texas historian wrote an article for Harper’s entitled “The American West, Perpetual Mirage”?

5. In what year did Marc Reisner die?

(see the answer key)

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