Unit1-SectionA Summary: My brother, Jimmy, was born with brain damage due to a difficult delivery. Accompanying my growing up was revolving around my brother’s life and protecting him from being picked on by other kids. Unfortunately, father, who was inseparable with Jimmy, died in 1991. Jimmy was a wreck and believed that the world he’d known was_gone . Even worse, mother died six months later and I alone was left to look after Jimmy. After that, Jimmy moved to New York City to live with me for a while. But he still longed to live in parents’ houseand he finally returned. So far, he has lived there for 11 years and blossomed on his own. I held a party for Jimmy’ 57th birthday just a few days after 9·11 disaster, but no one of the family could come. I called on my friends to help who brought ideal presents and made it a festive and merry occasion. I knew that the constant love and support of our friends and family would get us through all the hardships in life. There had never been any limitations to what Jimmy’s love could accomplish.
Unit4-SectionA Summary: To celebrate US independence and the France-America alliance, a French artist created the Statue of Liberty, with his wife’s arm and his mother’s face as models for his creation. Barbie originated from a German doll and an American girl, Barbara, whose parents made Barbie popular. Barbara and her brother Ken, the human models of Barbie and her boyfriend, had different opinions on the doll. Inspired by the Gothic window of an old farmhouse, Grant Wood produced American Gothic. It was the faces of his dentist and sister in the painting that captured the world’s attention. Contrary to the tradition, the image of a buffalo and three actual American Indians were used on two sides of the coin, the Buffalo Nickel, by a famed artist James Earle
Fraser. When Sam Wilson was providing meat to the army in a war, some explained the initial letters “US” as Uncle Sam. It became popular later because of a character in political cartoons. An artist created its portrait in army recruiting posters.
Unit6-SectionA Summary : Since earthquakes may cause great destruction, we need to learn how to detect them quickly. Animals always give us warnings. For example, before an earthquake hens would not enter their cages; rats run out from their hiding places and march fearlessly through houses; even normally quiet dogs bark in chorus (齐声) all over town. Pigeons are especially noisy and fly in unusual patterns. And most noticeable is a chemical change in ground water before a quake.
Unit7-SectionA Summary: Bill Gates, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, is the richest businessman in the world. When he was still a college student at Harvard University, he and his friend, Paul Allen wrote an interpreter for the programming language used by MITS Altair, which laid the first brick in the foundation of Microsoft. In the early 1980s, Microsoft produced the operating systems (MS-DOS), which dominated the software platform until the 1990s. By 1995, about 85% of the world’s personal computers were using a Microsoft operating system. In 1997, Gates was worth
an estimated $40 billion.
Unit9-SectionA Summary: Signing agreements before marriage has become
popular in the United States since 1980s. Premarital agreements are designed to solve problems like how to divide up financial assets if a couple divorces. Some people are strongly against them but others argue that there are several reasons for them: to protect the considerable accumulation of wealth of one of the spouses, to protect children from a previous marriage, to lay bare the responsibilities and save a couple from a terrible marriage, etc. With 50% of all marriages in America ending up in divorces, premarital agreements seem to be gaining in acceptance.
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