The Intellectual Devotional: American History: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation's Past

The Intellectual Devotional: American History: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation's Past

The Intellectual Devotional: American History: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation's Past

The Intellectual Devotional: American History: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation's Past

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Overview

Modeled after those bedside books of prayer and contemplation that millions turn to for daily spiritual guidance and growth, the national bestseller The Intellectual Devotional—offering secular wisdom and cerebral nourishment—drew a year's worth of readings from seven different fields of knowledge.

In The Intellectual Devotional: American History, authors David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim have turned to the rich legacy of American history for their selections. From Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to Martin Luther King Jr., from the Federalist Papers to Watergate, the giant figures, cultural touchstones, and pivotal events in our national heritage provide a bountiful source of reflection and education that will refresh knowledge, revitalize the mind, and open new horizons of intellectual discovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781594869853
Publisher: Harmony/Rodale
Publication date: 10/16/2007
Series: The Intellectual Devotional Series
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 557,447
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

David S. Kidder is an entrepreneur with a wide range of technology and marketing expertise. Kidder and his companies have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Fast Company. Kidder is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology and was a recipient of ID magazine's International Design Award. He lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife, Johanna, and son.

Noah D. Oppenheim
, a senior producer of NBC's Today show, has extensive experience in television and print journalism. He has produced and reported for Scarborough Country and Hardball with Chris Matthews, and his writing has appeared in Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, Men's Health, and the Weekly Standard. He resides in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

Monday, Day 1 Politics & Leadership

week 1

John Smith

In the spring of 1607, a group of English settlers reached North America after almost five months at sea. Exhausted by the long voyage, they landed on a small, uninhabited island in Virginia off the coast of Chesapeake Bay. The small colony they built there--the first permanent English settlement in the New World--they named Jamestown, after King James I of England.

One of the best-known leaders of the Jamestown expedition was Captain John Smith (c. 1580-1631), a twenty-seven-year-old adventurer and soldier of fortune who had fought as a mercenary in several European wars before signing up for the English mission to Virginia. Courageous and headstrong, Smith took charge of the colony for much of the next two difficult years, before an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced him to return to England in 1609.

Conditions for the settlers at Jamestown, who were surrounded by Native Americans, were arduous. During their first winter in Virginia, many of the 108 colonists died from disease or Indian attack. A primitive wooden stockade built around the settlement did not halt the attacks. Smith himself was captured by the Indians that winter and held hostage for about a month before he was released.

For the next year, Smith tried to impose discipline on the dysfunctional colony. Many men in the group, the members of which had come to Virginia seeking riches, considered themselves English "gentlemen" and hadn't expected to labor in the New World; Smith put an end to their pretensions, famously declaring that "he who does not work, will not eat."

After Smith's departure, the colony nearly disbanded without his leadership. After a few more rocky years, and an infusion of more settlers from England, Jamestown recovered. But as more English settlers migrated to the region, other towns soon overtook Jamestown in importance, and the Virginia capital moved to Williamsburg in 1698. Jamestown virtually disappeared, and the site of the original stockade later became a farm before it was rescued by historical preservationists.

Additional Facts

1. Smith had an unfortunate habit of being taken prisoner. Prior to coming to the Americas, he had been employed as a mercenary in Europe, where he was captured in Hungary and sold as a slave to the Turkish pasha before eventually escaping.

2. In a later expedition to North America in 1614, Smith explored the coastline of the region north of Virginia, which he dubbed New England.

3. Smith claimed that Pocahontas, the young teenage daughter of the powerful Powhatan chief, saved his life by stopping her father from executing him. Pocahontas married one of the Jamestown settlers, John Rolfe, in 1614 and visited England with him in 1616.

Tuesday, Day 2 War & Peace

Pequot War

Short and bloody, the Pequot War (1636-1638) was the first major clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the New World. The Pequot were one of the most powerful tribes in the region that is now Connecticut, but they were nearly annihilated in the war. In the wake of the conflict, Native Americans in New England were pushed onto smaller and smaller settlements as their land was taken by white settlers streaming to the New World from Europe.

The first permanent European settlements in Connecticut were founded by the Puritans in 1633. Tensions with the Pequots flared almost immediately. The immediate cause of the war was the massacre of an English ship's crew in 1636, which the Puritans blamed on Pequot warriors. The English launched retaliatory raids and quickly convinced many other Indian tribes in the area to join the war. With their native allies and superior weaponry, the English easily defeated the Pequots. By modern standards, the English war was nearly genocidal. The English soldiers regarded all Native Americans as heathens and a threat to peace in the New England wilderness, and the soldiers indiscriminately killed hundreds of Pequot women and children as well as warriors.

With most of the Pequot leadership wiped out, the Treaty of Hartford in 1638 put a halt to the brutal war. The English, determined to erase even the name of the Pequots, officially abolished the tribe, enslaving some members and distributing the rest as spoils to their Native American allies. Major conflict between Native Americans and the English would resurface, however, during King Philip's War in 1675.

Additional Facts

1. The name Connecticut came from the Mohegan word Quinnehtukqut, meaning long tidal river.

2. The English outlawed the use of the word Pequot after the war, but it entered New England lore anyway and later served as the inspiration for the name of the ship Pequod in Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick.

3. Descendants of the Pequots, confined to a tiny reservation in Connecticut, eventually opened the world's largest casino, Foxwoods, in 1993.

Wednesday, Day 3 Rights & Reform

Slavery

Beginning in 1619, when the first group of twenty Africans arrived at Jamestown in chains, thousands of slaves were imported into the British colonies of North America. Within a few generations, slave labor formed the basis of the South's agricultural economy and had spread north to the rest of the original thirteen colonies. By any standard, slavery was an unspeakable human tragedy that caused immeasurable harm to its victims.

Although slavery was part of the economy in both the North and the South, the institution eventually took on distinct guises in the two regions. To describe the differences, historians distinguish between a "slave society" and a "society with slaves." A "slave society" was one in which slavery dominated the major forms of economic production, which was the case in the South by the eighteenth century.

A "society with slaves," in contrast, refers to a society in which slaves did not dominate the economic modes of production and instead provided supplemental labor, such as work conducted within the home. In Massachusetts in the mid-1700s, for instance, only about one in eight households owned a slave, and the typical slaveholder had only two slaves. Rather than toil in the fields, Northern slaves often worked as maids, blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, and house servants.

Because of the differing roles slavery played in the societies of the North and the South, the extent to which the two regions relied on slavery began to diverge in the eighteenth century. In the South, slavery became more important, while in the North, the institution began to fade. At the time of the American Constitutional Convention of 1787, many of the Founders assumed that slavery would eventually die out. Indeed, after the convention, various states in the North began the process of abolishing slavery, granting slaves their freedom in a given year or at a certain age, depending on the law their state established.

However, just as slavery was ending in the North, the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 guaranteed that the institution would remain integral to the Southern economy--laying the groundwork for widening regional differences in the nineteenth century.

Additional Facts

1. The 1840 census listed one slave in New Hampshire.

2. Slavery was also common throughout Europe's other New World colonies. In the French colony of Haiti, Toussaint-Louverture (1743-1803) led a successful slave revolt in 1793.

3. The first twenty African slaves taken to Jamestown aboard a Dutch warship were from the modern-day nations of Congo and Angola.

Thursday, Day 4 Business

Tobacco

In 1492, sailors aboard Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the New World were puzzled by the sight of Native Americans in the Caribbean smoking rolled-up tobacco leaves. Several of the crew members took the odd custom back to Europe with them, where it caught on immediately. Within a generation, smoking was the rage in the Old World; the resulting demand for the tobacco leaf helped fuel the subsequent colonization of the Americas.

The importance in American history of the tobacco plant, Nicotiana tabacum, can hardly be exaggerated. Tobacco was the driving force behind many European ventures in the New World, the single biggest cash crop of the first English settlements in North America, and the backbone of the economy in Virginia, the largest of the thirteen colonies.

In Virginia, large-scale tobacco growing began almost immediately after the establishment of the Jamestown colony. Indeed, in 1620--the year the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth--the Virginia colony was already exporting 119,000 £ds of tobacco back to England. In Virginia, thousands of English settlers established tobacco farms clustered in the Tidewater region near the present-day city of Norfolk. By the end of the seventeenth century, Europe was importing more than 25 million £ds of tobacco.

Many of the workers on tobacco farms were slaves. However, because of the way tobacco was farmed and cured, the crop was not typically associated with large-scale plantations. After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton surpassed tobacco as the biggest cash crop in the South. Although no longer the country's agricultural mainstay, tobacco remains a significant part of the American economy today, despite the major health risks associated with smoking.

Additional Facts

1. A definitive link between smoking and cancer was not proven until the twentieth century, but the intuitive danger of inhaling smoke was grasped much earlier; King James I (1566-1625), the namesake of the Jamestown colony, hated smoking and published a notorious pamphlet attacking the "filthie noveltie."

2. Nicotine, the addictive element in tobacco, is so toxic it is also used as an insecticide.

3. Jamestown's first major tobacco farmer was John Rolfe (1585-1622), the husband of the legendary Native American princess Pocahontas (c. 1595- 1617).

Friday, Day 5 Building America

Pueblo Civilization

Some of the oldest known structures in North America, the stone houses and ceremonial sites of the ancient Pueblo civilization were built around 850 AD in the parched canyons of the present-day southwestern United States. Archeologists believe that the cliffside complexes, each a stupendous feat of prehistoric engineering, were in use for about 400 years before they were abruptly abandoned. The ancient cliff dwellers who lived in them were the ancestors of modern-day Native American tribes including the Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni.

The ancient Pueblo civilization existed for about 2,000 years in the Four Corners region where modern-day Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. Sometimes known as the Anasazi, the tribes began carving their famous sandstone structures into canyon walls during a period of explosive population growth beginning about 700 AD. Historians believe the buildings were used for housing, storage, and religious rites.

Set amid the arid mesas and canyons of the Southwest, the empty cliff dwellings dazzled the white settlers who first encountered them in the nineteenth century. Archeologists have spent decades debating whether drought, civil war, religious turmoil, or a combination of factors caused the Pueblo to abandon their elaborate complexes around 1250 AD. Whatever the cause, the ancient Puebloans eventually resettled near present-day Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Today, thousands of abandoned Pueblo sites are scattered throughout the Four Corners region of the Southwest. The best known are found at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico.

Additional Facts

1. The sandstone formations in the Pueblo region are believed to be about 250 million years old.

2. Anasazi, meaning ancestral enemy in Navajo, though not considered a politically correct term, remains in widespread use.

3. Archaeologists exploring ancient Pueblo sites have unearthed many discarded tools, including wooden flutes almost 1,500 years old.

Saturday, Day 6 Literature

Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672) authored the first book of poetry published in the British colonies of North America. The wife of a leading Puritan official, Simon Bradstreet, she arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, aboard the first ship carrying Puritans to the New World. Although she began writing early in life, Bradstreet's poetry was not published until 1650, when her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America appeared in print.

The subjects of Bradstreet's poems reflected the difficult lives of the early English settlers, as well as the distinct challenges faced by women in seventeenth-century America. Bradstreet wrote about common problems for the Puritans like sickness and house fires, in addition to more metaphysical poems about her own religious beliefs. The Bradstreets had eight children, and many of Anne's later poems addressed the travails of raising a family amid the difficult conditions of the New World.

Bradstreet's poems, influenced by such English poets as Philip Sidney (1554- 1586) and Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599), show mastery of formal technique and wide-ranging erudition about subjects ranging from medicine to arcane Puritan theology. Many of her poems are also tender. One of her most well- known verses, "To My Dear and Loving Husband," which was not published until after her death, is a poignant love letter to her husband:

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Published women poets were a rarity in the seventeenth century, and Bradstreet's poems occasionally hint at some of her fellow Puritans' hostility toward her literary endeavors. For example, in one poem she wrote: "I am obnoxious to each carping tongue / Who says my hand a needle better fits." Many of Bradstreet's most well-known poems were not published until after her death, but she is now considered America's first English- language poet.

Additional Facts

1. Bradstreet's father, Thomas Dudley (1576-1653), also immigrated to Massachusetts and became a leading political opponent of John Winthrop (1588-1649). The two men alternated in the governorship for much of the first two decades of the colony's existence.

2. One of the original Boston Brahmin families, descendents of the Bradstreets include the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894).

3. Bradstreet's husband became governor of Massachusetts after her death.

Sunday, Day 7 Arts

John Singleton Copley

The leading painter of colonial-era America, John Singleton Copley (1738- 1815) won acclaim for his big, detailed portraits of many of the most prominent citizens in his native Boston, including Revolutionary War leaders Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and Paul Revere (1734-1818). Although Copley himself left Boston in 1774, never to return, he continued painting in London and won election to Britain's prestigious Royal Academy of Art, a rare honor for an American-born painter.

Copley was born in Boston to a poor Irish immigrant family, and his father died when he was a young boy. At the time, the thirteen colonies lacked the great art schools of Europe, and Copley largely taught himself to paint.

Reading Group Guide

GENERAL AMERICAN QUIZ

Politics and Leadership:
1. Q. Where did John Smith establish the first permanent English settlement in the New World?
A. On a small, uninhabited island in Virginia off the coast of Chesapeake Bay, which would later be known as Jamestown.

2. Q. Who was “Deep Throat,” the secret source who tipped off the Washington Post to the Watergate Scandal?
A. Former FBI official W. Mark Felt, who revealed himself in 2005.

3. Q. Who is the last U.S. president NOT to graduate from college?
A. Harry S. Truman.

War and Peace:
1. Q. Which archipelago did the U.S. buy from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million as part of a new American effort at imperialism?
A. The Virgin Islands.

2. Q. Which CIA director was forced to resign after the embarrassing aftermath of the failed “Bay of Pigs” invasion during the Kennedy administration in April of 1961?
A. Allen Dulles.

3. Q. During World War II, what was the name of the U.S. battleship that the Japanese bombed and sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?
A. The USS Arizona.

Rights and Reform:
1. Q. What gay bar located in New York’s Greenwich Village was raided by police on June 28, 1969, sparking several days of protest that were considered the genesis of the gay rights movement?
A. The Stonewall Inn.

2. Q. Which “Cradle of the Confederacy” resident became the first woman to lay in honor at the U.S. Capitol building after her death in 2005?
A. Rosa Parks.

3. Q. Which island is known as the “Island of Tears”?
A. Ellis Island.

Business:
1. Q. What was the name of Jamestown’s first tobacco farmer, who also happened to be the husband of the legendary American Indian princess Pocahontas?
A. John Rolfe.

2. Q. As a result of the Enron accounting scandal, what was the name of the law President George W. Bush signed in 2002 to represent a renewed effort by the government to tighten regulations on corporate America?
A. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

3. Q. Between which two California universities was the first Internet connection established in 1969?
A. Stanford University and UCLA.

Building America:
1. Q. In 1978, which working-class section of Niagara Falls, New York, was evacuated after environmentalists connected its industrial past to the unusually high rates of birth defects, miscarriages and cancer?
A. Love Canal.

2. Q. Which American president signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, creating a domestic highway system which measured 42,793 miles, cost $114 billion over 35 years, and was the biggest public works project in the nation’s history?
A. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

3. Q. Which are the two oldest baseball fields in America? Which is the oldest?
A. Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park. Wrigley was built in 1914, Fenway in 1912.

Literature:
1. Q. Who is the last American writer to win the Nobel Prize? Which of this writer’s books was named the top American novel of the last 25 years according to a poll conducted by the New York Times Book Review?
A. Toni Morrison, and Beloved.

2. Q. What unorthodox journalistic style, characterized by drugs, alcohol and first-person narration did Hunter S. Thompson make famous?
A. “Gonzo” journalism.

3. Q. What was the name of the sequel to “Gone With the Wind,” authorized by Margaret Mitchell’s estate and written by Alexandra Ripley?
A. Scarlett.

Arts:
1. Q. What was the nickname of Andy Warhol’s New York studio, which was a notorious hangout for groupies, avante garde musicians, artistic wannabes, and the deranged fan who shot and nearly killed Warhol in 1968?
A. The Factory.

2. Q. What piece of music did American classical music conductor, Leonard Bernstein, conduct on Christmas Day in 1989 in Berlin to celebrate the demolition of the Berlin Wall?
A. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which features the “Ode To Joy.”

3. Q. With which American pop star did Michael Jackson co-write the charity single “We Are the World” to raise funds for famine relief in Africa?
A. Lionel Richie.

CITY SPECIFIC QUIZ
ATLANTA 1. Q. At which university did Toni Morisson, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, teach while she wrote The Bluest Eye?
A. Howard University

2. Q. What was the name of the sequel to “Gone with the Wind,” authorized by Margaret Mitchell’s estate and written by Alexandra Ripley?
A. Scarlett (1991).

3. Q. In 1886, which Confederate war veteran and patent medicine impresario invented Coca-Cola, hoping to market it as a “brain tonic and intellectual beverage?”
A. John S. Pemberton.
BOSTON 1. Q. Which are the two oldest baseball fields in America? Which is the oldest?
A. Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park. Wrigley was built in 1914, Fenway in 1912.

2. Q. Which two Bostonians lead the patriot cause and masterminded the Boston Tea Party of 1773?
A. John Hancock and Samuel Adams.

3. Q. Who native Bostonian is the only American to sign all three of the U.S.’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution, and the Constitution?
A. Ben Franklin.

CHICAGO 1. Q. Which are the two oldest baseball fields in America? Which is the oldest?
A. Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park. Wrigley was built in 1914, Fenway in 1912.

2. Q. In 1848, the construction of the railroad and a canal turned Chicago into the nation’s transportation hub. What did the canal connect?
A. The Mississippi River and Lake Michigan.

3. Q. Which journalist’s book written in 1906 drew attention to the dangerous working conditions and poor wages of slaughterhouse workers in Chicago?
A. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

FLORIDA 1. Q. One of the leading U.S. songwriters in the 19th Century wrote Swanee River, which is still the official state anthem of Florida today. What’s his name?
A. Stephen Foster.

2. Q. Walt Disney World, the Orlando-based amusement park was opened five years after Walt’s death. Who opened it?
A. Walt’s brother, Roy Disney.

LOS ANGELES 1. Q. Between which two California universities was the first Internet connection established in 1969?
A. Stanford University and UCLA.

2. Q. In 1940, Dick and Mac MacDonald opened the first McDonald’s in San Bernadino, a Los Angeles suburb, as a hotdog and barbecue stand. They eventually sold it to a franchisee who later transformed it into the global empire famous for it’s fast-food and golden arches. What was his name?
A. Ray Kroc.

3. Q. “The Simpsons,” which Fox first aired in 1989, is still going strong in 2007 and had its first feature-length movie out this summer. Along with cartoonist Matt Groening, which Hollywood screenwriter created Springfield’s first family?
A. James L. Brooks.

NEW YORK 1. Q. What was the nickname of Andy Warhol’s New York studio, which was a notorious hangout for groupies, avante-garde musicians, artistic wannabes, and the deranged fan who shot and nearly killed Warhol in 1968?
A. The Factory.

2. Q. What gay bar located in New York’s Greenwich Village was raided by police on June 28, 1969, sparking several days of protest that were considered the genesis of the gay rights movement?
A. The Stonewall Inn.

3. Q. Which island is known as the “Island of Tears”?
A. Ellis Island.

PHILADELPHIA 1. Q. Which revolutionary-leading journalist published Common Sense, a pamphlet which called on Americans to reject the notion that a faraway, hereditary king could govern thirteen colonies from a faraway island?
A. Thomas Paine.

2. Q. Which converted Quaker established the colony of Pennsylvania in 1681 as a sanctuary for persecuted Quakers? Also, who founded the University of Pennsylvania?
A. William Penn, and Benjamin Franklin.

3. Q. Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, which two became future presidents?
A. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

SAN FRANCISCO 1. Q. Between which two California universities was the first Internet connection, established in 1969?
A. Stanford University and UCLA.

2. Q. What was the name of the mill where lumber foreman James Marshall first found flakes of gold that would later turn into the California Gold Rush of 1849?
A. Sutter’s Mill, after the owner, John Sutter.

3. Q. Until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the San Francisco earthquake was the costliest disaster in America’s history, and remains the nation’s deadliest earthquake, with over 3,000 fatalities. On what date did this 7.7 Richter scale trembler take place?
A. April 18, 1906.

TEXAS 1. Q. As a result of the Enron accounting scandal, what was the name of the law President George W. Bush signed in 2002 to represent a renewed effort by the government to tighten regulations on corporate America?
A. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

2. Q. Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th President of the United States in 1963, taking over the Oval Office after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Who did he defeat in the 1964 presidential race to stay elected?
A. Republican Barry Goldwater.

WASHINGTON D.C. 1. Q. Who was “Deep Throat,” the secret source who tipped off the Washington Post to the Watergate Scandal?
A. Former FBI official W. Mark Felt, who revealed himself in 2005.

2. Q. Which CIA director was forced to resign after the embarrassing aftermath of the failed “Bay of Pigs” invasion during the Kennedy administration in April of 1961?
A. Allen Dulles.

3. Q. Which “Cradle of the Confederacy” resident became the first woman to lay in honor at the U.S. Capitol building after her death in 2005?
A. Rosa Parks.

ENTERTAINMENT SPECIFIC QUIZ
1. Q. According to the American Film Institute, which song was recently voted “best-ever song” in the history of American cinema?
A. “Over the Rainbow,” which also won an Oscar for Best Song in 1940 for The Wizard of Oz.

2. Q. What piece of music did American classical music conductor, Leonard Bernstein, conduct on Christmas Day in 1989 in Berlin to celebrate the demolition of the Berlin Wall?
A. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which features the “Ode To Joy.”

3. Q. Paramount Studios signed Archibald Leach, an Englishman, to a movie contract in 1931. In order to improve his marketability and leading-man persona, what did they change his name to?
A. Cary Grant.

4. Q. With which American pop star did Michael Jackson co-write the charity single “We Are the World” to raise funds for famine relief in Africa?
A. Lionel Richie.

5. Q. What’s the name of the café where most of the movie, Casablanca, takes place?
A. Rick’s Café Americain.

6. Q. What unorthodox journalistic style, characterized by drugs, alcohol and first-person narration did Hunter S. Thompson make famous?
A. “Gonzo” journalism.

7. Q. “The Simpsons,” created in the late 1980s is still airing in 2007 on FOX and had its first feature-length film out this summer. Along with Matt Groening, which Hollywood screenwriter helped create Springfield’s first family?
A. James L. Brooks.

8. Q. Who is the only woman to win four Academy Awards for Best Actress?
A. Katherine Hepburn.

9. Q. Which writer coined the term “Jazz Age” in the title of his short-story collection, and to describe the popularity of jazz in the 1920s?
A. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

10. Q. Which German-born, American cartoonist created and popularized the elephant and the donkey as symbols of the two major American parties?
A. Thomas Nast.

11. Q. Walt Disney’s first animated cartoon, “Steamboat Willie,” was released in 1928 and starred an effeminate Mickey Mouse. What was its revolutionary breakthrough?
A. “Steamboat Willie” was the first cartoon to have a sound track.

12. Q. What is the highest domestic grossing movie (adjusted for inflation) in the history of American cinema?
A. Gone With the Wind.

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