The pioneering and still essential text on semantics, urging readers to improve human communication and understanding with precise, concrete language.In 1938, Stuart Chase revolutionized the study of semantics with his classic text, The Tyranny of Words. Decades later, this eminently useful analysis of the way we use words continues to resonate. A contemporary of the economist Thorstein Veblen and the author Upton Sinclair, Chase was a social the...

Writings by the pioneering linguist Benjamin Whorf, including his famous work on the Hopi language as well as general reflections on language and meaning.The pioneering linguist Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941) grasped the relationship between human language and human thinking: how language can shape our innermost thoughts. His basic thesis is that our perception of the world and our ways of thinking about it are deeply influenced by the structure of the languages we speak. The writings c...

Hundreds of weird and wonderful facts in this massive encyclopedia of food and drink oddities! A perfect gift for foodies and trivia fans alike!Food Weird-o-Pedia offers up hundreds of off-kilter bits of info about food that will make you rethink what you know about even those dishes you’ve been eating your whole life. Organized in sections such as “Between-Meal Tidbits: Curious Facts about Snacks” and “Spice Up Your Life: Unexpected morsels about condimen...

Learn the way of the forager and identify, harvest, and prepare wild plants by season.Have you ever wondered what it would be like to gather wild plants growing around you for your food and medicine instead of a drugstore to treat a common ailment? The Forager's Handbook is an essential guide for living this lifestyle year-round.With more than forty years of experience in the world of plants, forager Vickie Shufer empowers you to maintain and impro...

In Wine Talk, seasoned wine professional Raymond Blake, who has been writing about wine for twenty-five years, caters to those who want to drink their wine without ceremony but with some engagement. For those who have been put off by highfalutin terminology and forbidding ritual. For those who want the message simplified but not dumbed down and for those who love a glass of wine but for whom technical details are a turn off. Through Blake's well-told vinous tales and anecdotes, re...

A philosophical critique of how society encourages us to avoid risk when we should instead accept it.When Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in a heroic attempt to save two children caught in rough seas, obituaries around the world rarely failed to recall that she authored In Praise of Risk, implying that her death confirmed the ancient adage that to philosophize is to learn how to die. Now available in English, this magnificent book indeed offers a trenchant crit...

A 2021 USA Today Bestseller! Get thousands of facts at your fingertips with this essential resource: business, the arts and pop culture, science and technology, U.S. history and government, world geography, sports, and so much more.The World Almanac® is America’s bestselling reference book of all time, with more than 83 million copies sold. For more than 150 years, this compendium of information has been the authoritative source for school, librar...

Over 35 mindful walking exercises for finding balance, building awareness, and reducing stress—from a wellness teacher and fitness expertGlenn Berkenkamp invites us to discover how we sense, move, think, and feel in our bodies. By reframing the joys and opportunities presented to us by the act of walking, he shows us how to become reflective and inwardly directed, even as we take in the world around us.With 35 different walks, and with the help of a “Which ...

" Babel is an endlessly interesting book, and you don't have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it . . . it's just so much fun to read." —NPREnglish is the world language, except that 80 percent of the world doesn't speak it. Linguist Gaston Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world's people in their mother tongues, you'd need to know no fewer than twenty languages. In Babel, he sets out to explore these top twenty worl...

Longlisted for the Cundill History PrizeProfiled in The New YorkerNew York Times Book Review • Editors’ ChoiceVivid and magisterial, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen reconfigures the rise of a modern world through the advent and spread of written constitutions.A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutio...

A "remarkable" history of the great river of Southeast Asia ( Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain).The Mekong River runs over nearly three thousand miles, beginning in the mountains of Tibet and flowing through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before emptying into the China Sea. Its waters are the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, and first begot civilization on the fertile banks of its delta region at Oc Eo near...

This extensive reference volume presents the etymological history of thousands of English words.The story of how words come to be is the story of how humans think, and how we fashion our civilizations. Words can be the product of long and intertwining histories, migrations from other languages, or new coinages of science or slang. This diversity of origins is part of what gives the English language its beauty and power.In Dictionary of Word Origins, ...