Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . B.C. 8000–7000 First planting of wild sugar cane, on the island of New Guinea 6000 Sugar cane reaches the Philippines 1500–900 Sugar cane used in Hindu ceremonies described in oral traditions that date from around this time 515 According to the Greek author Herodotus, the Persians had found what may be sugar cane in what is now India and Pakistan 327 Nearchus, friend of Alexander the Great, again mentions the reed that makes honey without bees, in India 286 First mention of sugar cane in China What is the purpose of this section of text?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . I wanted to know more about the beguiling Nina, and my cousin had plenty of stories to share. He told me that her grandfather was a Russian serf—a farmer who could be bought and sold by the noble who owned his land. Family legend has it that this serf, a remarkable and intelligent man, helped to change the course of the history of sugar. In the early 1800s, the British controlled most of the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and the sea routes to Europe. As a result, their rivals were desperate to find a new way to create sugar. They turned to beets. We don't know exactly what Nina's grandfather's invention did, but as the story goes, he found a way to give raw beet sugar sparkling hues. People from Russia to the cafés of Vienna could now buy cheap and attractive sugar produced on European soil. Serfs were much like slaves, since they had no choice about where they lived or worked. Yet Nina's grandfather made so much money from his invention that he was able to buy his freedom from his owner. He went on to become a very rich man—so rich, he not only bought a piece of land on the Volga River but married off his daughter to a noble who owned the next stretch of river lands. Together they could form a kind of mini empire, controlling a large swath of this important waterway, and they became the first family in the area to buy an automobile. . . . Age of Science 1747 Andraeas Marggraf discovers that beet sugar is identical to cane sugar 1840s Beets become a major crop in Ukraine 1852 Indians begin to arrive in Natal to work in sugar 1861 Czar Alexander II frees Russia’s serfs How does the timeline support the text?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . THE AGE OF HONEY There was a time before sugar, when those white grains that melt on your tongue did not exist anywhere on earth. Historians speak of the Iron Age, the Bronze Age—metals that were used in weapons and tools. But we could just as well speak of the first several thousand years of human history as the Age of Honey. How does the heading serve the authors’ purpose?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . I wanted to know more about the beguiling Nina, and my cousin had plenty of stories to share. He told me that her grandfather was a Russian serf—a farmer who could be bought and sold by the noble who owned his land. Family legend has it that this serf, a remarkable and intelligent man, helped to change the course of the history of sugar. In the early 1800s, the British controlled most of the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and the sea routes to Europe. As a result, their rivals were desperate to find a new way to create sugar. They turned to beets. What is the purpose of this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. My great-grandparents had come from India to Guyana—then British Guiana—in the late nineteenth century to work on the sugar plantations. Sugar was the backbone of the British Empire at that time. The demand was huge, for sugar had gone from being a luxury that only kings could afford to a necessity. Even the poorest of London shopgirls took sugar in their tea. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States. But even after they freed their slaves, the sugar plantation owners were desperate to find cheap labor to cut cane and process sugar. So the British owners looked to another part of the empire—India—and recruited thousands of men and women, who were given five-year contracts and a passage back. What kind of inference can the reader make about the importance of sugar in the late nineteenth century?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . MARC It was a typically hot, dry day in Jerusalem. Marina and I were sitting on a sun-warmed stone patio when I learned my family's sugar story. A cousin of mine was filling in a bit of our history that had always puzzled me. My father's family came from Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, where his father, Solomon, the grand rabbi of Kiev, was the latest in a long line of rabbis that stretched back to the 1300s. Solomon was a forward-thinking rabbi who helped make bridges between the Jewish community and the Christians. He knew that change was coming, and he committed himself to building what was to become the land of Israel. My grandfather moved his family to Tel Aviv, where he became one of the leaders of the Jewish community. What is the purpose of the heading in this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . In the Age of Sugar, Europeans bought a product made thousands of miles away that was less expensive than the honey from down the road. That was possible only because sugar set people in motion all across the world—millions of them as slaves, in chains; a few in search of their fortunes. A perfect taste made possible by the most brutal labor: That is the dark story of sugar. What is the purpose of the cause-and-effect structure of this passage? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . A rock drawing in Spain from about 7000 B.C. shows a man who has climbed a hillside, found a crevice holding a hive, and is reaching in to grab the honey. Indeed, a lucky wanderer in just about any part of Europe, Africa, or Asia that wasn’t covered with ice could stumble on a hive and—at the risk of some stings—come away with a treat. (People in the Americas had no bees, so used syrups made from maple trees, agave cactus, or mashed fruits for their sweeteners.) Then someone figured out that you didn't have to be lucky. You could hollow out a log near bees, and they would make it their home. You could "keep" bees—you didn't have to find them. Which statement best describes the structure of this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . Sugar is a taste we all want, a taste we all crave. People throughout the planet everywhere have been willing to do anything, anything at all, to get that touch of sweetness. We even know exactly how thrilling it was to taste sugar for the first time. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition met up with the Shoshone, who had little previous contact with Old World products, Sacagawea gave a tiny piece of sugar to a chief. He loved it, saying it was "the best thing he had ever tasted." Sugar created a hunger, a need, which swept from one corner of the world to another, bringing the most terrible misery and destruction, but then, too, the most inspiring ideas of liberty. Sugar changed the world. We begin that story with a man who could never know enough. How does the conclusion of the prologue support the authors’ purpose? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . Nina was always a mysterious figure in the family: beautiful as a movie star, cosmopolitan and elegant, with wide Slavic cheeks. She spoke only Russian, though she lived much of her adult life in Tel Aviv. There were rumors that she came from nobility and that she had once been very rich. She and Avram were thought of as a glamorous couple—he the charming man with his head in the clouds (in Yiddish the word for that kind of person is luftmensh , "air man''), she the mysterious beauty who had given up everything to be with him. Which statements best describe the author’s purpose for writing this passage? Choose two correct answers.
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