Jim Madison was walking through the American Cemetery(公墓) at Normandy one day in 2001 when his eyes fell on a grave marker that caught him by surprise, “Elizabeth A. Richardson, American Red Cross, Indiana July 25, 1945”.The chance discovery led to his new book-- An American Woman in World War Two, which tells about the war through the eyes of Richardson.

Richardson joined the Red Cross in 1944 and worked on a Clubmobile-- a converted bus from which she and other women served coffee and chatted to American soldiers scattered across England and France. More important than the food, they were a reminder of home for lonely and miserable soldiers.

She died at 27 in a crash of a two-seater L-5 Sentinel aircraft. She was one of four women buried at the American Cemetery at Normandy.   

Madison said the present understanding of World War Two just focused on the experiences of male soldiers, but women were also important to the war effort and brought their own views to the conflict. “The point I try to make in the book is how close Richardson came to understanding war,” he said. “She saw the effects of it, and she grieved(感到悲痛).”

When Madison returned from Normandy in 2001, he managed to contact Richardson’s younger brother, Charles Richardson Jr. It was her family’s keeping of her letters and diaries that made possible the book, which quoted from them extensively.

    Madison believes America’s fascination with World War Two will outlive those who fought it and the generations that follow them. Since the late 1980s, he has taught undergraduate courses on the war at Indiana University, and he said students obviously warm up to the subject.

He said he sometimes talked to World War Two soldiers who “have a sense that young people don’t know and they don’t care”.  “I tell them it’s the opposite”, he said.

68. How did Jim Madison get the idea of writing a book about World War Two?

A. His friends suggested it. 

B. He got it quite by accident

C. It was requested by Richardson’s brother.

D. It was arranged by his university.

69. The passage suggests that women working in the Red Cross, like Richardson,     

A. provided warmth and encouragement to soldiers

B . were braver than male soldiers

C. didn’t experience much suffering during the war

D. had a good understanding of the cruelty of the war

70. What made Madison’s new book special?

A. That it was based on a real life story and focused on the cruelty of war.

B. That it talked about war from a woman’s point of view.

C. That it quoted a lot from Richardson’s letters and diaries.

D. That it reminded people of those who contributed in World War Two.

71. According to Madison, today’s American youth       .

A. know a lot about World War Two

B. don’t respect World War Two soldiers

C. are eager to learn about World War Two

D. are more interested in learning about male soldiers

Section C

Directions: Read the following text and choose the most suitable heading from the list A-F for each paragraph. There is one extra heading which you do not need.?

A. The Decade of Internet Revolution

B. The Era of National Misfortune

C. The Era of Misplaced Anxiety

D. The Decade of Great Feats

E. The Decade of Youth Heroism in Distress

F. The Decade of Great Imbalances

  The first decade of the new millennium has come to an end. It’s become a sort of habit to give a representative name to each decade, so, once again, an effort is under way to find a term to fit the years from 2000 to 2009.

80. __________

  That shouldn’t be too hard a job for us here in China. First, no country has seen economic growth in the last decade like this. The economy quadrupled, with almost double-digit annual growth, and GDP went from No.6 to No.3. It’s now only slight below that of Japan, and many are saying that it will only be another year or two before we have the world’s second largest economy. In addition, in 2008, China was host to the Olympics, possibly the best organized and hosted Games over, and that impressed the world and boosted Chinese confidence.

81. _________

  The economy developed at a breakneck pace, and personal wealth mushroomed--- for many, anyway. Salaries multiplied, stock market investment and real estate were a bubble, then burst, then became a bubble again. China now has one of the largest collections of millionaires and billionaires in the world, and has helped keep the world’s luxury products industry from going under. Meanwhile, the earnings gap has widened in an unprecedented way. Millions are still living near the poverty line and the urban poor has become an obvious problem.

82. _________

  Yet, how could we think of the changes without including the Internet? If one thing can be credited with making the most changes in people’s lives, it should be the World Wide Web. We learned to use e-mail, chatrooms, and BBS at the beginning of the decade, and, after witnessing one dotcom burst, it’s time for the second Internet entrepreneurial wave. This time, however, it’s in the form of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Kaixin, as well as video-sites like Youtube and Tudou.

83. __________

  Oh, and who could forget the many misfortunes, and the tragedies, that befell China in the last 10 years: mining accidents that killed dozens at a time, a public health crisis like SARS, or the disastrous Wenchuan earthquake that destroyed towns and thousands of family. We seem to have a disproportionate share of tragic things happening here. At the same time, the Chinese, especially  younger ones, have shown an amazing ability to recover from these disasters and be stronger and more unified. Millions of young volunteers poured into Sichuan to offer their help, as they did in other emergencies.

84. ___________

  The West has a generally darker view of this past decade. One of The New York Times articles in mid-November said that, in thinking about a name from the American point of view, it seems difficult to find the right expression for so much upheaval, change, and worry: the Y2K millennium bug, which never caused much damage and chaos, the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which were never found; and so on. The United State launched two wars after 9/11, but never realized that the real threat to American interests lay in its own economy and finances until the sub-prime crisis, erupted in 2007.

  Others find it an almost impossible job to name the decade, saying it will take many years to name the 2000s because it will take many years to figure out what we feel that we lost during that period.

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