Why are golf assistants called caddies? Why do the British drive on the left and North Americans on the right? Why is football played on a "gridiron," and a leg injury called a "Charlie horse"?
The answers to these questions and the origins of hundreds of other expressions and customs are brought together in this fascinating collection of the history behind everyday words and routines.
With all the conciseness of his original radio scripts, Doug Lennox "cuts to the quick" in telling you the things you always wanted to know.
Over 1,000 barbed and brilliant definitions by the 19th-century journalist and satirist often called “the American Swift.” Congratulations are “the civility of envy.” A coward is “one who in an emergency thinks with his legs.” A historian is a “broad-gauge gossip,” more. H. L. Mencken called these “some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language.
In The Force of Reason Fallaci takes aim at the many attacks and death threats she received after the publication of The Rage and the Pride. Oriana begins by identifying herself with one Master Cecco, the author of a heretical book who was burnt at the stake during the Inquisition seven centuries ago on account of his beliefs, and proceeds with a rigorous analysis of the burning of Troy and the creation of a Europe that, to her judgment, is no longer her familiar homeland but rather a place best called Eurabia, a soon-to-be colony of Islam. She explores her ideas in historical, philosophical, moral, and political terms, courageously addressing taboo topics with sharp logic.
