Geoffrey Nunberg

Numberg writes there has never been an age as wary as ours of the tricks words can play. These are the years of talking dangerously, and the author of "Talking Right" deftly unpacks the telling phrases of America's national conversation.

"The words that echo through Geoff Nunberg's new journey across the landscape of American language evoke exactly the tenor of our times. Nunberg has an ear for the new, the comic, and the absurd. He pronounces that "'Blog' is a syllable whose time has come," and that "You don't get to be a verb unless you're doing something right," with which he launches into the effect of Google on our collective consciousness. Nunberg hears the shifting use of "Gallic" as we suddenly find ourselves in bitter opposition to the French; he's fiercely funny in his demystification of economists who can't deal with hard times - "a 'recession' is really no more exact a notion that a bad hair day"; perhaps only Nunberg could compare "America the Beautiful" with the Syrian national anthem that contains the line "A land resplendent with brilliant suns ... almost like a sky centipede."" "Behind the droll linguistic observations that Nunberg delights in are the core concerns that have occupied American minds. "Going Nucular," the title piece, is more than a bit of fun at the president's expense. Nunberg's analysis is as succinct a summary of the questions that hover over the administration's military strategy as any political insider's. It exemplifies the message of the book : that in the smallest ticks and cues of language the most important issues and thoughts of our times can be heard and understood. If you know how to listen for them."--BOOK JACKET.

"This engaging collection of National Public Radio broadcasts and magazine pieces by one of America's best-known linguists covers the waterfront of contemporary culture by taking stock of its words and phrases. From our metaphors for the Internet ("Virtual Rialto") to the perils of electronic grammar checkers ("The Software We Deserve"), from traditional grammatical bugaboos ("Sex and the Singular Verb") to the vagaries of business jargon ("You're Out of Here"), from the pronunciation of foreign names ("A Suffix in the Sand") to the ways we talk about illicit love ("Affairs of State"), Geoffrey Nunberg shows just how much the language we use from day to day reveals about who we are and who we want to be."--Jacket.