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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word refers to that which is coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency, without effort or premeditation, natural and unconstrained?
(a) Instantaneous.
(b) Combustive.
(c) Structured.
(d) Spontaneous.

2. What refers to a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position?
(a) Newspaper.
(b) Stereotype.
(c) Pseudo-event.
(d) Propaganda.

3. Boorstin suggests, in Chapter 2 - Section 1, that heroes can now be what?
(a) Mass-produced.
(b) Emulated.
(c) Destroyed.
(d) Copied.

4. Boorstin asserts, in Chapter 2 - Section I, that Americans have fooled themselves about how much _____ is contained in the world and in individuals.
(a) Fame.
(b) Greatness.
(c) Poverty.
(d) Wealthy.

5. Where was Karl Baedeker observed to drop a pea on every twentieth step of the staircase to the roof, so he could report the number of steps accurately?
(a) The Louvre.
(b) The Sistine Chapel.
(c) St. Patrick Cathedral.
(d) Milan Cathedral.

Short Answer Questions

1. What term refers to an activity that exists for the sole purpose of the media publicity and serves little to no other function in real life?

2. What does Boorstin assert inevitably give a false representation of a country because they have been specially selected and taken from context?

3. Boorstin writes that critical history and critical biography have reduced heroes to mere pawns of what?

4. What does Boorstin call "a person who is known for his well-knownness"?

5. What term means to make uniform or similar, as in composition or function?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the "Crime of the Century" affect Lindbergh's celebrity?

2. How do the personalities of celebrities evolve, according to Boorstin?

3. What subject does Boorstin address in Chapter 1 - Section V? How have pseudo-events distorted image?

4. How does Boorstin describe pseudo-events in the political arena, in Chapter 1 - Section III? What examples does he offer?

5. How did Charles Lindbergh succumb to celebrity, according to Boorstin?

6. How does Boorstin describe tourism in America in Chapter 3 - Section V?

7. What does Boorstin assert of travelers' dissociation since the advent of tourism?

8. How does Boorstin distinguish pseudo-events from propaganda?

9. What extravagant expectations does Boorstin assert consumes the American psyche?

10. How does Boorstin describe the power of celebrity to obscure and destroy the heroic?

(see the answer keys)

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