Some prior knowledge about these documents may be useful, but you should be able to find the answers in the text. So unless you’relooking for an intriguing hobby for your résumé, no need to read all of The Federalist Papers.
—Samantha
How to handle: The founding documents are about all kinds of things,
but they are mostly about how we should live together, how we should
govern ourselves, what our values and principles are or should be. Their
language is extremely formal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .”
The nice thing about founding documents is that because they are written
in olden-times-speak, the questions will be very straightforward. The
Serpent will not be asking about some deep, hidden meaning. The
questions will ask about what the author is saying and how he says it.
- The Great Global Conversation These will also be primary sources.
Some of these are speeches and essays by famous Americans like
Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Others are by noteworthy
people from other countries, like Mahatma Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, or
Sia. But all of them will be about important and lofty ideals like freedom
and justice and Top 40 pop.
How to handle: These will also be challenging texts, so you can expect
most of the questions to be literal—just figure out what the passage says,
not the deeper things it doesn’t say. Many of these passages are taking a
stand against something that is wrong. They gather the evidence of how
wrong that thing is, and they argue for a solution. It is highly unlikely that
