provide protection (police)
provide safety (fire departments)
give a driver’s license
approve zoning and land use
Who is the Governor of your state now? Answers will vary. [District of Columbia residents should answer that D.C. does not have a Governor.]
What is the capital of your state? Answers will vary. [District of Columbia residents should answer that D.C. is not a state and does not have a capital. Residents of U.S. territories should name the capital of the territory.]
The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers. (James) Madison
(Alexander) Hamilton
(John) Jay
Publius
U.S. CITIZENSHIP—SAMPLE TEST TEN
What is the “rule of law”? Everyone must follow the law.
Leaders must obey the law.
Government must obey the law.
No one is above the law.
What are the two major political parties in the United States? Democratic and Republican
When must all men register for the Selective Service? at age eighteen (18)
between eighteen (18) and twenty-six (26)
What is one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for? U.S. diplomat
oldest member of the Constitutional Convention
first Postmaster General of the United States
writer of “Poor Richard’s Almanac”
started the first free libraries
Name one American Indian tribe in the United States. [USCIS Officers will be supplied with a list of federally recognized American Indian tribes.] Cherokee
Navajo
Sioux
Chippewa
Choctaw
Pueblo
Apache
Iroquois
Creek
Blackfeet
Seminole
Cheyenne
Arawak
Shawnee
Mohegan
Huron
Oneida
Lakota
Crow
Teton
Hopi
Inuit
The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words? We the People
What is the political party of the President now? Visit uscis.gov/citizenship/testupdates for the political party of the President.
What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now? Visit uscis.gov/citizenship/testupdates for the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Who is the “Father of Our Country”? (George) Washington
Who was the first President? (George) Washington
I. On November 13, 2020, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a revised version of the civics test. Under the revised version, the list of potential test questions increased from 100 to 128, the number of test questions asked increased from 10 to 20, and the number of correct answers required to pass increased from 6 to 12. The test score required to pass (60 percent correct) did not change. The revised version was viewed by some as an effort by the Trump administration to make the test more difficult. On February 22, 2021, under the Biden administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would revert back to the previous version of the test, which had been in use since October 1, 2008. The version implemented under the Trump administration was phased out on April 19, 2021.
Appendix II: Full Harris Poll Survey Results
Study conducted by Harris Insights and Analytics. The authors on the study are Mark Penn, John Gerzema, and Amber Broughton.
Acknowledgments
There were many people who helped make this book possible, and I would like to acknowledge here their invaluable help.
Of course, the book could not have been written without the support and cooperation of each of the interviewees, for which I am extremely grateful.
The book also required a world-class publisher, and I was fortunate to again have Simon & Schuster’s willingness to publish this work. For that, I am quite appreciative of the support and help of Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s CEO, and Dana Canedy, Simon & Schuster’s senior vice president and publisher. And I could not have had a better, more helpful editor than Stuart Roberts.
My relationship with Simon & Schuster was initially made possible by my counsel, advisor and law school friend of forty-plus years, Bob Barnett. His support has been indispensable to this book’s being published.
Many of the interviews occurred as part of the Congressional Dialogues series that I have cohosted at the Library of Congress since 2013. Both Jim Billington, who served as Librarian of Congress from 1987 to 2015, and Carla Hayden, who became the Librarian of Congress in 2016, could not have been more helpful. Jim launched the Dialogues with great enthusiasm, and Carla has also been a devoted and totally engaged supporter of the Dialogues.
At the Library, a number of individuals have also been actively involved in helping the Dialogues work so well. Marie Arana has done a spectacular job of working to secure the participation of the authors.
I also helped to start a series of interviews with historians at the New-York Historical Society. Several of the interviews from that series are included in this book. Louise Mirrer, the president and CEO of the society, has worked tirelessly to ensure that this series has worked so well, and I am indebted as well to her for her support of this book.
A few of the interviews occurred as part of the Smithsonian Institution’s Great Americans Award Program that I helped to start. Anthea Hartig, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, made these interviews possible, for which I am grateful.
I want to thank Doug Bradburn, director of Mount Vernon, for his assistance in making one of the interviews possible.
Another of the interviews was part of the “Peer to Peer” show that I host on Bloomberg TV and PBS. I want to thank the show’s producer, Kelly Belknap, for helping to arrange the interview.
And, finally, one of the interviews occurred as part of a series at the Kennedy Center. I appreciate the center’s president, Deborah Rutter, making this interview possible.
As with my other books, this one could not have been completed without all of the able and tireless editing by Jennifer Howard of the interviews and my introductory summaries. Jennifer is a consummate editor (and writer) whose introduction to me by Marie Arana has been a real godsend.
My longtime personal staff members have also been invaluable in making this book possible. MaryPat Decker, my chief of staff, made the whole process of getting this book put together possible (most especially coordinating my schedule with all of the others involved in doing the interviews and assembling the book). Both Laura Boring and Amanda Mangum helped immeasurably in preparing the texts of my own introductory pieces. And Robert Haben and Trenton Pfister, my research associates, were tireless and indispensable in gathering the information needed to help me prepare for the interviews. I would also like to thank Mandeep Singh Sandhu for all of his help with the audio and video technical aspects of many of these interviews.
I would also like to thank my partners at Carlyle, particularly my cofounders, Bill Conway and Dan D’Aniello, for their long-time forbearance as I worked on these interviews, this book, and so many other non-Carlyle projects over the past thirty-plus years.
Inevitably, there will be some mistakes in what I have written in this book. The buck stops with the author, and I therefore take responsibility for all of these mistakes.
About the Author
© ROBERT SEVERI
DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN is a cofounder and cochairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private investment firms.
Mr. Rubenstein is chairman of the boards of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Council on Foreign Relations; a fellow of the Harvard Corporation; a trustee of the National Gallery of Art, the University of Chicago,
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Constitution Center, the Brookings Institution, and the World Economic Forum; a director of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and chairman of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. He has served as chairman of the board of trustees of Duke University and the Smithsonian Institution, and cochairman of the board of the Brookings Institution. Mr. Rubenstein is an original signer of the Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.
Mr. Rubenstein is the host of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS, and the author of The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians (Simon & Schuster, 2019) and the New York Times bestseller How to Lead: Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
A native of Baltimore, Mr. Rubenstein is a 1970 magna cum laude graduate of Duke University, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa. Following Duke, he graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973. Prior to cofounding Carlyle in 1987, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in New York and in Washington, and during the Carter administration he was deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/David-M-Rubenstein
@simonbooks
ALSO BY DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN
The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians
How to Lead: Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers
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Index
A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.
Abbey, George, 245
abortion, 31
Abrams, Stacey, 147
Abzug, Bella, 352, 355
actors, 285–96
Adams, Abigail, 43, 46–47
Adams, John, 36, 40–43, 46–47
African Americans Black Lives Matter movement and, 2, 193, 276
civil rights movement and, see civil rights movement
in Civil War, 109, 112
Declaration of Independence and, 27, 36, 43–46, 181, 193
Jim Crow laws and, 2, 7, 27, 75, 142, 145, 146, 366
“separate but equal” and, 146
slavery and, see slavery
voting rights for, 7, 144–46, 148, 156, 165, 171, 172, 174, 182, 189–92
women’s suffrage and, 168, 171
Agassi, Andre, 311
AIDS, 319, 349
Albright, Madeleine, 395 on being an immigrant, 371–79
Aldrin, Buzz, 245–48, 258
Alger, Horatio, 13
Allen, Danielle S., 395–96 on the Declaration of Independence, 35–47
Allen, Paul, 221
al-Qaeda, 66
Alzheimer’s disease, 268
Amazon, 225, 226
America, naming of, 22, 23
American colonies, 24–25, 38, 39, 50–52, 197
American Dream, 13, 14
American Experiment, 1–2, 6, 13–15, 341
American genes, 2, 6–13, 15 American Dream, 13
capitalism and entrepreneurship, 11
civilian control of the military and peaceful transfer of power, 10
culture, 12–13
democracy, 6–7
diversity, 12
equality, 8
freedom of religion, 9
freedom of speech, 8–9
immigration, 11–12
rule of law, 9–10
separation of powers, 10
voting, 7
see also specific subjects
American government, three branches of, 10, 280
American history, Lepore on, 19–34
American Psychiatric Association, 347, 353
American Revolution, 24–25, 30, 40, 95, 96, 103–5, 114, 128
André, Maurice, 278
Andreessen, Marc, 223, 224
Anthony, Aaron, 152, 153
Anthony, Susan B., 166, 168, 172, 174 “Women’s Rights to the Suffrage,” 339
Apple, 221, 224, 226
Arlington National Cemetery, 111–12
Armitage, David, 47
Armstrong, Louis, 281–82
Armstrong, Neil, 241, 245–48, 255
art, 297–306
Ashe, Arthur, 309, 318
Assing, Ottilie, 159–60
atheism, 58
Auld, Hugh, 152
Auld, Sophia, 152
Auld, Thomas, 152–54, 158
automobiles, 202, 206, 208, 212
Bailey, Harriet, 152
Baker, Howard, 183
Baldwin, James, 149
Baltimore, George Calvert, Lord, 52
bankruptcy, 27–28
Baptists, 55
Barr, Juliana, 92
baseball, 322–37
Basie, Count, 284
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 282
Belafonte, Harry, 296
Bell, Alexander Graham, 233
Bell Labs, 219
Benioff, Marc, 353
Berners-Lee, Tim, 208, 223
Bernstein, Carl, 62, 69–71
Beschloss, Michael, 396 on the presidential election of 2020, 74–83
Bezos, Jeff, 63, 214, 225
Biden, Joe, 144–45, 258, 260 COVID-19 pandemic and, 6
inauguration speech of, 143
Trump’s contesting of election win by, 3–5, 9–10, 74–76, 78, 80, 82
Black Lives Matter, 2, 193, 276
Blacks, see African Americans
Blight, David W., 396–97 on Frederick Douglass, 150–66
Blow, Charles, 146–47
Bolger, Ray, 294
Bonner, Bobby, 328
Borg, Björn, 311
Boston Tea Party, 39
Bradford, Mark, 397 on the visual arts, 297–306
Bradlee, Ben, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71
Bradley, Bill, 314
Brando, Marlon, 286, 294–95
Brattain, Walter, 219
Brekus, Catherine, 397–98 on religious freedom, 48–60
Breyer, Stephen, 385
Brin, Sergey, 214, 219
Brinkley, Douglas, 398 on the moon race, 243–58
Brown, John, 160–62
Brown v. Board of Education, 185
Bryan, William Jennings, 201
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 372, 378
Buchanan, Pat, 349
Buffett, Warren, 202
Bundy, McGeorge, 254
Burch, Dean, 72
Burns, Ken, 398–99 on the Vietnam War, 114–26
Bush, George H. W., 31
Bush, George W., 66 in 2000 election, 77–78
Bush, Vannevar, 208, 216
cancer, 267–68
Cansino, Paco, 290
capitalism, 11, 23 Srinivasan on, 197–212
Capitol attack of 2021, 4–5, 74, 75, 80–82
Carmichael, Stokely, 188, 192, 193
Carnegie, Andrew, 202
Carter, Jimmy, 56, 348–49, 372
Case, Steve, 225–26
Casey, Bill, 65
Catt, Carrie Chapman, 168, 171
Celler, Emanuel, 357, 367
cemeteries, national, 109–12
Chaffee, Roger, 247
checks and balances, 10
China, 211–12, 226
Chinese Exclusion Act, 359–60
citizenship, 358–59, 384 test, 407–25
civics and civic education, 380–92
Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 142
of 1875, 143
of 1964, 342, 352
of 1968, 352
Civil Rights Cases, 143
civil rights movement, 2, 142, 148–49, 150, 256, 295–96, 348 Meacham on, 181–93
Civil War, 2, 3, 12, 27, 75, 98, 128, 141, 142, 161–62, 172, 202, 204, 205, 305 African American soldiers in, 109, 112
Faust on death and, 103–14
Native Americans and, 98
Civil War, The, 114
Clark, Jim, 191
Clinton, Bill, 149, 260, 350, 371, 378, 379, 380, 388
Clyburn, Jim, 145
Cold War, 209, 365, 367
Collins, Francis S., 399 on the Human Genome Project and scientific research, 259–69
Collins, Michael, 248
Collins, Pete, 316
Colson, Charles, 72
Columbus, Christopher, 21–23, 32, 87, 89, 90, 92
communism, 11, 197, 211–12
Compromise of 1850, 160, 203
Compromise of 1877, 27, 144
computers, 209, 213, 216–22, 224, 254–55
Confederacy, 27, 142, 149
Congress, 4, 10
Connally, John, 190
The American Experiment Page 44
