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A selection of "websterisms"; that is to say, various entries from his dictionary that are peculiarly American and show entertaining bits of Mr. Webster's character, if one were to look close enough. Prefaced by 60 pages of essay that function as a sort of biography of the 1828 Webster's Dictionary and its reverberations through society.
It takes a special kind of person to read a dictionary for fun. I thought I might be that kind of person, but after eight slow months it turns out I'm not. Good to know!
Jill Lepore's introduction is great. After that it is just excerpts from Webster's dictionary chosen to illustrate Webster's thought and prejudices and mistakes. It is occasionally interesting, but still, it's a dictionary. In small type. So, pretty rough.
I wrote a longer, much more interesting review that would have been totally exciting, but my computer caught a virus while I tried to determine whether Webster was the only person to refer to the planet Neptune as "Herschell" and I'm not going to write that review twice. Each person has only one masterpiece in them. For Webster, it was his dictionary. For me, it was probably my lost review.
Jill Lepore's introduction is great. After that it is just excerpts from Webster's dictionary chosen to illustrate Webster's thought and prejudices and mistakes. It is occasionally interesting, but still, it's a dictionary. In small type. So, pretty rough.
I wrote a longer, much more interesting review that would have been totally exciting, but my computer caught a virus while I tried to determine whether Webster was the only person to refer to the planet Neptune as "Herschell" and I'm not going to write that review twice. Each person has only one masterpiece in them. For Webster, it was his dictionary. For me, it was probably my lost review.