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"A 22-volume, highly illustrated, A-Z general encyclopedia for all ages, featuring sections on how to use World Book, other research aids, pronunciation key, a student guide to better writing, speaking, and research skills, and comprehensive index"--Provided by publisher.
Highlighting the 2009 edition are new and expanded articles on global warming, Darfur, Kosovo, blog, Sudoku, organic food, Bono, Jay-Z, Johnny Depp, Tony Hawk, among many other...
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"The encyclopedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, a good set conveyed a sense of absolute wisdom on its reader. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indira Gandhi helped millions of children with their homework. Adults cleared their shelves in the belief that everything that was explainable was now effortlessly...
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"Brimming with intelligence and personality, a vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made - a must read for word mavens. Have you ever tried to define the word "is?" Do you have strong feelings about the word (and, yes, it is a word) "irregardless?" Did you know that OMG was first used in 1917, in a letter to Winston Churchill? These are the questions that keep lexicographers up at night. While most of us might take dictionaries for...
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Edgar award-winning author of the popular historical novels A Conspiracy of Paper and A Spectacle of Corruption, David Liss showcases his amazing versatility with this brilliant new tale of contemporary suspense: a literary thriller set in Florida, where killing is a matter of conscience.
No one is more surprised than Lem Altick when it turns out he’s actually good at peddling encyclopedias door to door. He hates the predatory world of sales,...
No one is more surprised than Lem Altick when it turns out he’s actually good at peddling encyclopedias door to door. He hates the predatory world of sales,...
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For the first time ever, this thrilling literary detective story, doubling as a celebration of words, language, people and one of mankind's greatest achievements, unravels the mystery of the contributors from around the world who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read, write and speak.
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"A 7-volume illustrated, alphabetically arranged set that presents profiles of individual nations and other political/geographical units, including an overview of history, geography, economy, people, culture, and government for each. Includes a history of the settlement of each world region based on archaeological findings; a cumulative index; and Web resources"--Provided by publisher.
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"I'm reading the OED so you don't have to. If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on..."
So reports Ammon Shea, the tireless, word-obsessed, and more than slightly masochistic author of Reading the OED. The word lover's Mount Everest, the OED has enthralled logophiles since its initial publication 80 years ago. Weighing in at 137 pounds, it is the dictionary to end all dictionaries.
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"Peter Winceworth, a disaffected Victorian lexicographer, inserts false entries into a dictionary -- violating and subverting the dictionary's authority -- in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young overworked and underpaid intern employed by the dictionary's publishing house, is tasked with uncovering these entries before the work is digitised. As the novel progresses and their...
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"In 1934, Webster's Second was the great gray eminence of American dictionaries, with 600,000 entries and numerous competitors but no rivals. It served as the all-knowing guide to the world of grammar and information, a kind of one-stop reference work. In 1961, Webster's Third came along and ignited an unprecedented controversy in America's newspapers, universities, and living rooms. The new dictionary's editor, Philip Gove, had overhauled Merriam's...
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"Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and ever curious, she spends her childhood in Oxford in the room where her father and fellow lexicographers are collecting words for the first complete edition of the Oxford English Distionary. While they work, young Esme begins to collect other words, ones that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common...