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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When was Daniel J. Boorstin born?
(a) 1914.
(b) 1911.
(c) 1908.
(d) 1895.

2. What refers to a single complete page, front and back, in a finished book?
(a) Single.
(b) Press page.
(c) Double.
(d) Leaf.

3. What refers to something that exists independently of ideas concerning it?
(a) Pseudo-event.
(b) Experience.
(c) Reality.
(d) Action.

4. Boorstin writes in Chapter 6 - Section III, "We fill our lives not with experience but with the ____ of experience."
(a) Ideals.
(b) Stereotypes.
(c) Archetypes.
(d) Images.

5. In Chapter 6 - Section II, Boorstin warns that America has spent too much time attempting to "perfect our image rather than" what?
(a) Our ideals.
(b) Our politics.
(c) Our foreign policy.
(d) Ourselves.

6. When was Reader's Digest founded?
(a) 1911.
(b) 1949.
(c) 1900.
(d) 1922.

7. When did P.T. Barnum purchase Scudder's American Museum?
(a) 1867.
(b) 1905.
(c) 1841.
(d) 1859.

8. What is the fourth characteristic of the image, according to Boorstin?
(a) It is vivid.
(b) It is synthetic.
(c) It is ambiguous.
(d) It is believable.

9. In Chapter 5 - Section IV, Boorstin describes how the appearance of advertising has caused a movement from focusing on truth to focusing on what?
(a) Credibility.
(b) Commerce.
(c) Need.
(d) Desire.

10. Boorstin suggests that the graphic revolution and what else are mostly responsible for the abridgment and the mass production of art?
(a) Capitalism.
(b) Media.
(c) Commercialism.
(d) Democracy.

11. In Chapter 6 - Section I, Boorstin suggests that America return to its ____ and cease communicating with the rest of the world in image.
(a) Archetype.
(b) Prestige.
(c) Standards.
(d) Ideals.

12. Boorstin writes that the amount of dissociation has become so absolute that what no longer feels real?
(a) The pseudo-event.
(b) The pseudo-reality.
(c) The media.
(d) The natural.

13. The third aspect of successful advertising discussed by Boorstin in Chapter 5 - Section IV is what?
(a) Appeal of the contrived.
(b) Ambiguity.
(c) Appeal of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
(d) Appeal of the half-intelligible.

14. What refers to reputation or influence arising from success, achievement, rank, or other favorable attributes?
(a) Understanding.
(b) Narcissism.
(c) Pseudo-reality.
(d) Prestige.

15. What is the second characteristic of the image, according to Boorstin?
(a) It is synthetic.
(b) It is believable.
(c) It is ambiguous.
(d) It is simplified.

Short Answer Questions

1. Boorstin claims that in the effort to make art and literature accessible to all, these forms of expression were what?

2. When does Boorstin say books began to be made cheaper, due to a variety of factors, in Chapter 4 - Section I?

3. Boorstin states, regarding foreign affairs, "I suspect we suffer abroad simply because people know America through" what?

4. What states that the more we create images to "expand experience" the more we inevitably narrow experience?

5. In Chapter 6, Boorstin suggests that the greatest challenge Americans are now dealing with is what?

(see the answer keys)

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