If you have ever been completely wowed by the power you can have over language, or its power over you, Richard Lederer is your patron saint. He claims that English is "the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues." And then he demonstrates: "In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? ... Why our nose can run and our feet can smell? Why do they call them apartments when they're all together?" He alights on oxymorons ("pretty ugly," "computer jock"), redundancies, confusing words (are you sure you know the meaning of enormity?), phobias, contronyms, heteronyms, retroactive terms (acoustic guitar, rotary phone), and a host of other linguistic delights.

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This unique blend of thesaurus, dictionary, and manual of English usage defines, compares, and contrasts words of similar but not identical meaning--such as "infer" and "imply". More than 6,000 synonyms are included.

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New England schoolmaster, columnist, and bestselling author Lederer compiles a scrapbook that preaches, naturally, to those who are devoted to the wonder of words aggregated. There are tributes to heroes of the English language like Shakespeare or Lewis Carroll. He also shows that English isn't perfect, however: It's sexist (queens do not rule queendoms) and it lacks certain utilitarian words (what will we call the decade that will follow the Nineties?).

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Anguished English is the impossibly funny anthology of accidental assaults upon the English language. From bloopers and blunders to Signs of the Times to Mixed Up Metaphors...from Two-Headed Headlines to Mangling Modifiers, here is an outrageous treasury of assaults upon common language that will leave you roaring with delight and laughter.

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"Perhaps no one has more fun with the English language than Richard Lederer, " says Ann Lloyd Merriman of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Now columnist and bestselling author Lederer presents another uncut, unpolished, and certifiably authentic collection of language blunders. Fractured English, almost twice as large as ANGUISHED ENGLISH, will leave word lovers roaring with laughter.

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In this delightful volume you can horse around with the animal metaphors that make poetry of everyday speech, learn origins of phrases, have fun with word games like Fictionary and much more.

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That tireless verbivore Richard Lederer is at it again, this time providing, in cahoots with coauthor Richard Dowis, a quick-and-dirty grammar guide. In a time when Sing and Snore Ernie says, "It feels good to lay down," and Columbia University professor Edward Shapiro employs a whom where who is called for (in his book Shakespeare and the Jews), we are clearly in need of Lederer and Dowis to set us straight. In Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, the authors steer us away from problematic words and phrases (such as Aren't I); remind us of definitions we may have, er, confused (of, say, flotsam and jetsam, podium and lectern, prone and supine); and teach us to use comprise correctly.

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This irreverent guide surveys a whole gamut of British-American divergences, from sex to food, from pets to religion, from sports to money, and from war to-most divergent of all-humor. Entertaining and invaluable, Brit-Think, Ameri-Think has been updated to reflect changes in political, cultural, and social trends, and includes new chapters on cultural icons Oprah Winfrey and Bridget Jones, and on Brit-cool vs. Ameri-cool.

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