🧲 Books like this
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester · back to the book
What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
Margalit Fox · 363 pages
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, *The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code* tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on
Breaking the Maya Code
Michael D. Coe · 304 pages
"The inside story of one of the great intellectual breakthroughs of our time - the last great decipherment of an ancient script - now revised and updated."--BOOK JACKET.
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
Bill Bryson · 417 pages
Bill Bryson turns away from the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't wo
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
David W. Anthony · 568 pages
The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook
Victor Klemperer · 288 pages
"Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) was Professor of French Literature at Dresden University. As a Jew, he was removed from his university post in 1935, only surviving thanks to his marriage to an Aryan. From 1933 to 1935 Klemperer kept detailed diaries, which contain in note form some of the raw material for the German edition of LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. First published in 1957, The Language of the
The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
Melvyn Bragg · 322 pages
"In this book Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English Language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. Along the way its colorful story takes in a host of characters and locations, from the early tribes, Alfred the Great's stubborn resistance to the Danes, and through its early literary masterpieces s
Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing
Melissa Mohr · 336 pages
"Holy Sh*t tells the story of two kinds of swearing--obscenities and oaths--from ancient Rome and the Bible to today. With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome--which were remarka
The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English
Henry Hitchings · 440 pages
The Story of French
Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Julie Barlow · 496 pages
In Search of the Indo-Europeans
J.P. Mallory · 288 pages
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Nicholas Ostler · 624 pages
The Story of English
Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil · 496 pages
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
John McWhorter · 230 pages
Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, author McWhorter distills hundreds of years of lore into one lively history. Covering the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest,
Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language
Robert McCrum · 317 pages
It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the nineteenth century. Equally unlikely, a colony of that island nation, across the Atlantic, grows into the military and cultural colossus of the twentieth century. How? By the sword, of course; by trade and industrial ingen
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks
Keith Houston · 351 pages
Revealing the secret history of punctuation, this tour of two thousand years of the written word, from ancient Greece to the Internet, explores the parallel histories of language and typography throughout the world and across time.
Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z
David Sacks · 405 pages
A History of the English Language
Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable · 464 pages
"Comprehensive and balanced, this classic exploration of the history of the English language combines internal linguistic history and external cultural history from the Middle Ages to the present. Emphasis is on the political, social and cultural forces that affect language. [This text]: includes English Present and Future; Provides a new section on Gender Issues and Linguistic Change in Chapter 1
Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling
David Crystal · 328 pages
Presents a history of English spelling through chapters that cover such topics as the introduction of the Roman alphabet, each letter's origins, and the development of long and short vowels.
Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People behind Everyday Words
John Bemelmans Marciano · 152 pages
A collection of short essays shares the whimsical stories behind many everyday terms, from the Earl of Sandwich's invention of the meat-and-bread combination to Etienne de Silhouette's money-saving alternative to the portrait.
The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park
Jack Lynch · 326 pages
Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme
Chris Roberts
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Mark Forsyth · 373 pages
In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture
Alister E. McGrath · 352 pages
The King James Bible is the most familiar and widely read Bible translation in the world, recognized for centuries as both a religious and literary classic. But the origins of this masterpiece are far from what one might expect, and its beginnings lie in murder, deceit, bitter political feuds, and religious conflicts so intense they threatened the unity of England. The struggle to translate the Bi
The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation
Mark Kurlansky · 399 pages
"The Basque History of the World is the illuminating story of an ancient and enigmatic people. Signs of their civilization existed well before the arrival of the Romans in 218 B.C., and though theories abound, no one has ever been able to determine their origins. Their ancient tongue, Euskera, is equally mysterious: It is the oldest living European language, and is related to no other language on