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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When did the Enterprise reach Calcutta on its crossing from Falmouth?
(a) December 7, 1825.
(b) August 16, 1825.
(c) March 12, 1825.
(d) September 5, 1825.

2. Who was Mary Godwin's stepsister with whom Lord Byron had a brief affair in England?
(a) Sarah.
(b) Emma.
(c) Claire.
(d) Mary.

3. When did Robert Fulton launch the first commercial steamboat on the Hudson River?
(a) 1829.
(b) 1811.
(c) 1807.
(d) 1789.

4. The first steam-powered vessel to operate in India was a dredger on what river?
(a) The Ganges River.
(b) The Hooghly River.
(c) The Meghna River.
(d) The Feni River.

5. The novel The Circle of Reason involves the discovery of oil in a fictional emirate called what?
(a) Al-Isthan.
(b) Al-Ghazira.
(c) Al-Bhrama.
(d) Al-Harrissa.

6. What author did Lionel Trilling famously dismiss as one who thought "like a social function, not a novelist" (79-80)?
(a) Franco Moretti.
(b) Ian Hacking.
(c) Stanislaw Lem.
(d) John Steinbeck.

7. The author states in Part II, Section 2, "In China, which feeds more than 20 percent of the world's population off 7 percent of the world's arable land, desertification is already causing direct annual losses of" how much (89)?
(a) $75 billion.
(b) $65 billion.
(c) $25 billion.
(d) $45 billion.

8. Who organized the first successful drilling of an oil well at Oil Well Creek?
(a) Colonel George Marshall.
(b) Colonel Thomas Burnet.
(c) Colonel Bill McKibben.
(d) Colonel Edwin L. Drake.

9. In what novel by the author does he describe a character experiencing the crossing of the Enterprise?
(a) Sea of Poppies.
(b) Flood of Fire.
(c) The Hungry Tide.
(d) The Shadow Lines.

10. Who "argues that one of the original impulses of modernity is the project of 'partitioning,' or deepening the imaginary gulf between Nature and Culture" (68)?
(a) Stanislaw Lem.
(b) Ian Hacking.
(c) Ernest Gellner.
(d) Bruno Latour.

11. Near what town was the site of the first successful drilling at Oil Well Creek located?
(a) Hershey, Pennsylvania.
(b) Princeton, New Jersey.
(c) Albany, New York.
(d) Titusville, Pennsylvania.

12. When did U. Thant serve as the secretary-general of the United Nations?
(a) 1962-1971.
(b) 1971-1979.
(c) 1945-1959.
(d) 1975-1982.

13. When did Mahatma Gandhi write "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West" (111)?
(a) 1945.
(b) 1902.
(c) 1928.
(d) 1919.

14. Where is Mount Tambora in relation to Bali?
(a) 400 kilometers east.
(b) 300 kilometers east.
(c) 200 kilometers east.
(d) 100 kilometers east.

15. The author states in Part II, Section 1, "If Bruno Latour is right, then to be modern is to envision time as" what (123)?
(a) "Functioning."
(b) "Irreversable."
(c) "Constant."
(d) "Reversable."

Short Answer Questions

1. When was the first successful drilling of an oil well at Oil Well Creek organized?

2. What word from the book refers to the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history, as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time?

3. When did Rabindranath Tagore win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

4. The author asserts in Part II, Section 8, "Where it concerns human beings, it is almost always true that the more anxiously we look for purity the more likely we are to come upon" what (108)?

5. What is the title and central subject of Part III?

(see the answer keys)

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