This book starts strong, full of dark humor with an injection of historical asides which are fun for precocious (or adult) readers to spot. Towards the end however, the story becomes almost sentimental, where you almost feel sorry for Alexander Baddenfield and wonder about what Winterbottom will...
Confession time: I'm a word nerd. Which has me wondering why I wound up a psychology major and not an English major. Then again, neither one is likely to land you a decent job in the real world :-) I eat up this sort of book, full of entertaining tidbits about language and perfect for that quick ...
A set of rules for solving a problem. No, the first anonyponymous person in the book is not Al Gore. When a word begins with al-, there’s a good chance it comes from Arabic. This is true with alchemy, almanac, alcove, alcohol (ironically), and algor...