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An especially grim chapter in U.S. military history began on April 9, 1942 in the Philippines. Racked by disease and surrounded by an overwhelming Japanese force, 98,000 American soldiers, Filipino soldiers, and Filipino civilians surrendered to the Japanese. Then began what became known as the Bataan Death March. Herded by their captors, the prisoners slogged, limped, and dragged their comrades through fifty-five miles of jungle. Then they were jammed into railroad cars for further travel. Finally they were marched eight more miles to a prison camp. By the time they were locked up, their number had dwindled to 54,000. Almost three years later, only 513 skeletal, disease-ridden prisoners were still alive.

In the South, the Civil War destroyed half the region’s farm equipment and killed one-third of its draft animals. The death of slavery also ended the plantation system. The number of farms doubled from 1860 to 1880, but the number of landowners remained the same. The size of the average farm dropped by more than half, as sharecropping and tenancy rose. A shortage of cash forced Southern farmers to borrow against future crops. Crop liens and high credit costs kept a lot of black and white farmers trapped in a cycle of debit and poverty. So at the very time the rest of the economy was consolidating after the Civil War, Southern agriculture was marching off in the opposite, less efficient direction.

In the language of botanists (scientists who study plants), fruit has a different meaning than in everyday talk about food. To most of us, fruit refers to sweet or tart foods like apples, peaches, and lemons. To botanists, however, fruit also includes seed-containing “vegetables” such as cucumbers, eggplant, olives, peas, squash, string beans, and tomatoes (which are berries). Botanically speaking, cashews and other nuts are single-seed fruits. Many plants that we don’t eat-for example, milkweeds and azaleas-also are fruits. So, a mix of milkweeds and azaleas is a fruit cup; a package of dried fruit and nuts is a package of fruit and more fruit; and parents who scold, “Eat your vegetables!” when their children refuse to eat string beans or peas could, instead, coax, “Don’t you want to eat your fruit?”

Today’s full-time workweek of forty hours is considerably less than it was in the late 1800s. Bricklayers, carpenters, and other laborers in the building trades generally worked ten hours a day. A factory worker usually worked at least twelve hours a day. During the summer, many mills ran from sunrise to sunset, with shifts lasting as long as sixteen hours. In 1860 an average workweek was sixty-six hours long. Most employees worked six days a week.

The word opera comes from the Italian opera in musica (work in music), and it may be defined as a drama, either tragic or comic, sung throughout and presented on stage with scenery and action. The emphasis is on the solo voice, and, like the oratorio, which borrowed the forms from opera, it employs arias [melodic solos] and recitatives [musical forms without melody]. Because opera, of all the musicalor dramatic forms, is the most difficult and expensive to produce, it has always been associated with the upper strata of social life. Often, the satisfaction of being able to support an operatic production–that is, sponsor a big, ostentatious display– has been compensation enough for a great many noble and wealthy patrons. Likewise, to be able to understand and appreciate this art form has been, and still is, a prestige symbol with the general public. (Mary Ann Frese Witt et al.,The Humanities, Volume Two. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, p. 275.)

One simple but powerful mnemonic, or memory strategy, is called the method of loci (pronounced “low-sigh”), or the method of places. To use this method, first think about a set of familiar locations–your home, for example. You might imagine walking through the front door, around all four corners of the living room, and through each of the other rooms. Next, imagine each item to be remembered in one of these locations. Whenever you want to remember a list, use the same locations, in the same order. Vivid images of interactions or relationships seem, to be particularly effective. For example, tomatoes smashed against the front door or bananas hanging from the bedroom ceiling might be helpful in recalling these items on a grocery list. (Douglas A Bernstein et al., Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, p. 259.)

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The passage suggests that a high-protein snack

Excess sugar is brought from the blood into the cells by

An officer stops a person matching a robbery description. During the stop, the officer reasonably believes the person may be armed. Which action best fits the legal rule our authors discuss for this situation?