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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. How tall does Gladwell say the tallest man in the world was?

2. Where does Gladwell say local slingers played a decisive role against an invading army?

3. What does Gladwell say is the overriding assumption about class composition?

4. How old was Gladwell’s powerful Hollywood friend, when he started a snow-shoveling business with other students?

5. Who does Gladwell say was the ring-leader of the Impressionist group that met at Café Guerbois?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gladwell say causes dyslexia?

2. What does Gladwell say about Gary Cohn’s relationship with failure?

3. How does Gladwell say dyslexia prepared Brian Grazer to be a movie producer?

4. In what way does Gladwell say Ranadivé’s girls are similar to Lawrence of Arabia?

5. What is Gladwell’s hierarchy of professions?

6. What is “relative deprivation” (77)?

7. What kind of lesson does Gladwell derive from the story of Jules Holtzapffel?

8. What is the moral of the parable Gladwell tells about the Impressionist painters?

9. Where were the Philistines expanding into, when they encountered the armies of the Israelites?

10. What is Vivek Ranadivé’s qualification to coach basketball?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate the ending of David and Goliath. Does it ring true to you? Does it successfully resolve the problems and tensions that preceded it? What would you change, if anything? What are you left wishing for closure on, if anything?

Essay Topic 2

In many cases, you have to step back to a certain distance to share the values Gladwell espouses, overlooking, for instance, the sufferings of children with cancer, in order to see the value of Freireich’s cure, or to say that “You could kill André Trocmé” but “another André Trocmé would rise in his place” (274). How would you characterize the distance one has to have from things in order to see what Gladwell sees. Is it the distance of a scientist? An anthropologist? A statistician? A historian? What are the advantages and disadvantages of that intellectual/emotional distance?

Essay Topic 3

Evaluate your own reading of David and Goliath—did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

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This section contains 1,025 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample