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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 aspect of death did Mencken find most interesting?
(a) The physiological and chemical processes involved in death.
(b) How so often people die not gloriously or with grace, but ridiculously.
(c) How people are able to find God so quickly on their death bed.
(d) What the great poets have said about death.

2. Which of the following is NOT something that exists as a result of the Anglo-Saxon race, according to Mencken?
(a) The Ku Klux Klan.
(b) A tradition of cultural superiority.
(c) The slaughter of American Indians.
(d) Fundamentalism.

3. What was the subject of "The Noble Experiment"?
(a) Voting during World War I.
(b) Drinking during Prohibition.
(c) The Cuban revolution.
(d) A scientific breakthrough Mencken reported on.

4. Which was NOT a reason Mencken used in his assessment that houses are ugly in "The Libido for the Ugly"?
(a) The houses were painted yellow.
(b) The houses were shabby and dilapidated.
(c) The houses were structurally misshapen.
(d) The houses had awkward, skinny chimneys.

5. What happened when Mencken sent a junior reporter to get him liquor during the Republican National Convention?
(a) The junior reporter was arrested and spends the night in jail.
(b) The reporter encountered drunken goons, and failed to get any liquor.
(c) The reporter stole liquor from an aristocrat's secret stash.
(d) The convention organizers caught Mencken and toss him out.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was unique to the American psyche according to Mencken in "Libido for the Ugly"?

2. Who was Mencken referring to with the title, "A Good Man in a Bad Trade"?

3. What is wrong, in Mencken's opinion, with most artists' depictions of death?

4. What was Mencken's general opinion of religion at the end of "Holy Writ"?

5. According to Mencken, what if there had not been a Civil War in the United States?

Short Essay Questions

1. What were the general features of Anglo-Saxons, according to Mencken in "The Anglo-Saxon"?

2. What type of people attended the Progressive Party convention of 1948?

3. How did Mencken--with tongue firmly in cheek--try to justify a man's murdering of his wife in "A Good Man Gone Wrong"?

4. Why did Mencken take issue with Oliver Wendell Holmes' final court case?

5. What opinion did Mencken have about the English translation of the Bible?

6. Contemporaries wrote that Calvin Coolidge bore several similarities to Abraham Lincoln. Why did Mencken disagree with this claim?

7. What was the nature of film actor Valentino's problem, as related in "Valentino"?

8. What caused Mencken to question the American psyche in "The Libido for the Ugly"?

9. How was FDR able to win the Democratic National Convention of 1932?

10. According to Mencken in "The Calamity of Appomattox," what would have happened if the Civil War had never happened?

(see the answer keys)

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