William Safire

"William Safire, America's favorite writer on language, offers a new collection of pieces drawn from his nationally syndicated "On Language" column. Laced with liberal (a loaded word, but apt) doses of Safire's wit, these pieces search culture (high and low), politics, entertainment, and the word on the street to explore what the old but livelier-than-ever English language has been up to lately.". "With a keen wit and a sure grasp of usage, Safire dissects trends and traces the origins of colloquialisms that have become second nature to most Americans. He examines everything from whether one delivers "a punch on or in the nose" when offended to whether a disgraced politician should "step down," "step aside," or "stand down." Safire gives us the answers to these and many more quandaries, questions, and complexities of our contemporary lexicon.". "As always, Safire is aided by the Gotcha! Gang and the Nitpickers League-readers who claim to have found the language maven making flubs of his own. His comments and observations create a spirited, curious, and scholarly discussion showing that William Safire and his readership are wise in the way of words."--BOOK JACKET.

A collection of 150 short essays from the author's weekly syndicated column, "On Language."

At last, the passionate pundit and alliterative analyst William Safire has written of his lifelong love affair with Norma Loquendi - common speech. Translated from Latin, Norma Loquendi means "the everyday voice of the native speaker." William Safire has been entranced by plain-spoken language all of his life. Consumed by his desire for the proper word, Safire bares his soul, explaining why he favors naked aggression over nude aggression. He sensitively probes virile woman, a phrase uttered by cigarette advertisers in search of a new target group. And, taking liberties with Norma, Safire admits he prefers enthuse to emote, excite, or gush, even though he knows enthuse is not yet Standard English. Readers will experience the rapture of knowing the difference between a bubba (a Southern redneck male) and a buba (an affectionate Yiddish term for a small grandmother). They will be able to distinguish between rich and wealthy ("A rich family has to wait until its money ages before it becomes a wealthy family"). And perhaps most important, they will discover the correct pronunciation of salmon. A grand amount will attract attention, so it comes as no surprise that Safire's liaisons with Norma are scrutinized by a crowd of grammatical voyeurs known as the Lexicographic Irregulars, including Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, General Colin Powell, and comedian George Carlin, who invented the phrase vuja de ("the eerie sense that you never want to be in this place again"). Words slip in and out of vogue. Meanings change. Grammar can be hard. Only love of the lingo survives. William Safire knows, and he's willing to explain the difference between who and whom to prove it. Norma Loquendi - fickle, mysterious, relentless - will forever earn your tryst.

"A presidential hopeful has taken a beautiful, vulnerable woman as his mistress, though both are married to others. His rival for the presidency of the United States has even more sensational secrets to guard about his own past. An ambitious journalist unearths the stories of the private lives of both, and he hefts in his hand what he calls "the hammer of truth".". "The time is the end of the eighteenth century. The political figures whose intimate lives are about to be revealed are Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The journalist out to shape the course of the young nation's history is "that scurrilous scoundrel Callender," the fugitive from Scottish sedition law who pioneered the public exposure of men in power. The women he makes famous are the mysterious Maria Reynolds and the slave Sally Hemings.". "William Safire brings these real characters in our history to life. He recounts the dramatic clash of the Founders and the first journalists - drawn from actual events of the nation's beginnings - that has special relevance for our time.". "Much of the dialogue of Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe is drawn from their letters. The accounts of libel and sedition trials to suppress the opinions of Callender and his bombastic newspaper antagonist, "Peter Porcupine," are accurate. Hamilton's passionate and ironic defense of freedom of the press is true (although the notes of his speech were fleshed out by Safire, a former White House speechwriter). In a unique "Underbook," the author scrupulously sets forth his scholarly sources, separating fiction from dramatized history - and in so leveling with the reader, truly re-creates the passionate controversies of an era that presages our times."--BOOK JACKET.

Paluten ist ein echter Abenteurer und kann schon gar nicht mehr zählen, wie oft er Freedom nun schon gerettet hat. Professor Entes Klonmaschine hat sich dabei in der Vergangenheit als besonders hilfreich erwiesen. Doch ausgerechnet die geht jetzt kaputt. Für die Reparatur benötigt er ein besonders seltenes Metall, welches es nur auf dem Gipfel des höchsten und gefährlichsten Berg Freedoms gibt: Mount Schmeverest. Paluten und Edgar machen sich natürlich sofort auf den Weg, um das seltene Metall zu besorgen, stoßen dabei allerdings auf unerwartete Gefahren und unvorhergesehene Hindernisse. Schaffen sie es, diesen Widrigkeiten zu trotzen und das Metall zu bekommen?

There are connoisseurs. There are virtuosos. And then there are mavens. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Safire is the maven's maven. In this new collection from his New York Times Magazine column, "On Language," Safire - using alliteration, puns, and other tricks of the writer's trade - offers a cornucopia of words, phrases, slang, and grammatical oddities, proving once again why Time calls him "the country's best practitioner of the art of columny." Safire probes the surprising origins of such expressions as "kiss and tell," "people of color," "stab in the back," "bonfire of the vanities," and the whole nine yards.^ He attempts to explain what a White House press secretary meant when he announced, "We can't winkle-picker this anymore." He even explores tricky new usages of the word "fax." Quoth the maven: "In work conducted at home or at the office, the only certainties are death and faxes." Was George Bush (or speechwriter Peggy Noonan) the first to put "kinder and gentler" together? No, quoth the maven, who calls attention to similar incantations by Clarence Darrow, Mario Cuomo, and William Shakespeare. Safire also traces the evolution of "read my lips" and exposes the proud (or embarrassed) coiners of such terms as "lunatic fringe" and "nattering nabobs of negativism" (his own creation, he admits - an update of Adlai Stevenson's "prophets of doom and gloom"). Never one to shrink from a challenge, the maven boldly seeks a source for George Bush's inexplicable expression "like ugly on an ape." The best he can find is Margaret Mitchell's "ugly like a hairless monkey" in Gone with the Wind.^ Fortunately, Safire is not alone in such lexicographic quests. A faithful corps of would-be mavens - including Cuomo, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Phyllis Schlafly, and Alistair Cooke - supply Safire with their own research and opinions. Knowledgeable, witty, and impeccably grammatical, William Safire's essays on language are an important and entertaining reference for mavens everywhere.

This entertaining and informative dictionary lists words and phrases peculiar to government officials and politicians, analyzing their meanings and tracing their origins.

A humorous guide to good grammar and style.

Includes material on slang, jargon, neologisms, and readers' letters.

Provides information on terms and expressions, catchwords and slogans of American politics and government.

Synopsis: William Safire was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon from 1968 to 1973. During that time, as a Washington insider, Safire was able to observe the thirty-seventh president in his entirety: as noble and mean-spirited; as good and bad; as a man desirous of greatness. Rarely has there been a White House memoir more intimate or revealing in its exploration of the great events that took place "before the fall" of Watergate. In this anecdotal history, Nixon and his associates come alive, not as caricatures, but as men with high and low purpose: Henry Kissinger, William Rogers, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and Arthur Burns struggle not just for power, but for ideals.^ As William Safire says in his Prologue: "In this memoir, which is neither a biography of [Nixon] nor an autobiography of me nor a narrative history of our times, there is an attempt to figure out what was good and bad about him, what he was trying to do and how well he succeeded, how he used and affected some of the people around him, and an effort not to lose sight of all that went right in examining what went wrong." The book is divided into ten sections, in which run three main themes: the President, the Partisan, and the Person. As a president, Safire discusses Nixon and the Vietnam War, foreign policy, economics, and race relations. As a partisan, he discusses Nixon's attempt to form an alignment across party lines, successful in many respects before the president tolerated the excesses that eventually corrupted his administration.^ And as a person, Safire finds that Nixon was a mixture of Woodrow Wilson, Machiavelli, Theodore Roosevelt, and Shakespeare's Cassius--an idealistic conniver evoking the strenuous life while he thinks too much. This paperback edition of a classic primary source for historians includes a new introduction by its author. Studded with direct quotations that put the reader in the room where history was being made, Before the Fall is a realistic, shades-of-gray study of the Nixon years.

An illustrated collection of forty-two traditional tales about animals, magic, and everyday life.