The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published - Hardcover

Skinner, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062027468 ISBN 13: 9780062027467

Verlag: Harper, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

“It takes true brilliance to lift the arid tellings of lexicographic fussing into the readable realm of the thriller and the bodice-ripper….David Skinner has done precisely this, taking a fine story and honing it to popular perfection.”
—Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman

The Story of Ain’t by David Skinner is the captivating true chronicle of the creation of Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961, the most controversial dictionary ever published. 

Created by the most respected American publisher of dictionaries and supervised by the editor Philip Gove, Webster's Third broke with tradition, adding thousands of new words and eliminating "artificial notions of correctness," basing proper usage on how language was actually spoken. The dictionary's revolutionary style sparked what David Foster Wallace called "the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars." Editors and scholars howled for Gove's blood, calling him an enemy of clear thinking, a great relativist who was trying to sweep the English language into chaos. 

Skinner’s surprising and witty account will enthrall fans of Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman and The Meaning of Everything, and The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, as it explores a culture in transition and the brilliant, colorful individuals behind it. 

Entertaining and erudite, The Story of Ain't describes a great societal metamorphosis, revealing the fallout of the world wars, the rise of an educated middle class, the emergence of America as the undisputed leader of the free world, and how those forces shaped our language. Never before or since has a dictionary so embodied the cultural transformation of the United States.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Skinner is the editor of Humanities magazine, which is published by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Previously, he was an editor at The Weekly Standard, for which he frequently wrote. Before joining the Standard in November 1998, Skinner was managing editor of The Public Interest. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Salon, the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner, the Weekly Standard, American Spectator, Slate, and other publications. He is on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary. Until 2007, he edited Doublethink, a quarterly journal for young writers published by America’s Future Foundation.

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Created by the most respected American publisher of dictionaries and supervised by the editor Philip Gove, Webster's Third broke with tradition, adding thousands of new words and eliminating "artificial notions of correctness," basing proper usage on how language was actually spoken. The dictionary's revolutionary style sparked what David Foster Wallace called "the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars." Editors and scholars howled for Gove's blood, calling him an enemy of clear thinking, a great relativist who was trying to sweep the English language into chaos. Critics bayed at the dictionary's permissive handling of ain't. Literary intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald believed the dictionary's scientific approach to language and its abandonment of the old standard of usage represented the unraveling of civilization.

Entertaining and erudite, The Story of Ain't describes a great societal metamorphosis, tracing the fallout of the world wars, the rise of an educated middle class, and the emergence of America as the undisputed leader of the free world, and illuminating how those forces shaped our language. Never before or since has a dictionary so embodied the cultural transformation of the United States.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harper
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0062027468
• ISBN 13: 9780062027467
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar