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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. What is the title of Augustine's seminal written work?

2. What position did Augustine take in the later years of his life?

3. What tactics did Rustin and other civil rights leaders adopt to try to accomplish their goals?

4. What significant civil rights event did Rustin help plan and execute?

5. Why did Augustine's mother Monica tell him it was not necessary to bury her in Africa?

Short Essay Questions

1. For Augustine, what did the stealing of the pears symbolize?

2. What does Brooks imply is the impetus for Marshall's drive to succeed?

3. What request did Marshall make for his funeral arrangements?

4. In Chapter 7, what does David Brooks say is the difference between self-control and love?

5. What was the surprising outcome of Marshall's tense encounter with General Pershing in 1917?

6. How did Virginia Woolf characterize Eliot's work?

7. What kind of relationship did Mary Anne Evans (whose pen name was George Eliot) have with her mother?

8. How did George Marshall humiliate his father when he was a young boy?

9. What kind of attitude did Marshall have towards institutions, according to Brooks?

10. What kind of devotion dominated Eliot's teenage years?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Brooks proposes that joy "is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes" (269). Choose two people he profiles in the book and write an essay explaining how their lives demonstrated this idea.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay analyzing how the radio program Command Performance, the WWII-era radio show that Brooks heard on NPR, inspired his writing of The Road to Character, citing specific references to the text to support your answer .

Essay Topic 3

How did the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire act as a motivator for Frances Perkins' life work and what Brooks refers to as Perkins' vocation? Write an essay explaining your answer, citing specific references to the text to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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