🧲 Books like this
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
Bill Bryson · 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 Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Mark Forsyth · 373 pages
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss · 209 pages
Between You Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris · 228 pages
A New Yorker copy veteran presents laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing errors in language and usage, drawing on examples from classic literature and pop culture while sharing anecdotes from her work with celebrated writers.
The Deeper Meaning of Liff
Douglas Adams, John Lloyd · 156 pages
Does the sensation of Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny(2)? Can you deal with a Naugatuck(3) without causing a Toronto(4)? Will you suffer from Kettering(5) this summer? Probably. You are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences but just didn't know that there are words for them. Well, in fact, there aren't--or rather there weren't, unti
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,
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
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris · 272 pages
A recent transplant to Paris, humorist David Sedaris, bestselling author of “Naked”, presents a collection of his strongest work yet, including the title story about his hilarious attempt to learn French. David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that every day sp
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce · 395 pages
"A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.". "All of Bierce's known satiric definitions are here
The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
John Pollack · 212 pages
On Bullshit
Harry G. Frankfurt · 80 pages
Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it, yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves--and we lack a conscientious appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential mora
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 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
The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage
Kingsley Amis
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester · 286 pages
Traces the history of the Oxford English Dictionary from its earliest inception through its long path to completion, describes the process of creating a dictionary, and includes anecdotes about its creators and their work.
The 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.
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Nicholas Ostler · 624 pages
The Story of English
Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil · 496 pages
Politics and the English Language
George Orwell · 48 pages
When in French: Love in a Second Language
Lauren Collins · 243 pages
"A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier--a surprising turn of events for someone who didn't have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirel
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
Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z
David Sacks · 405 pages
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