The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings

I just read about The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings in this article from The Economist and I've got to get a copy!

Hitchings is also the author of Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary, which I also want to read after I first heard about it in Charles McGrath's New York Times Book Review "A Man of Many Words" published December 4, 2005. William Grimes also reviewed it in the New York Times here; click here to read the first chapter of Defining the World.

Though I don't know much about it, I've always been fascinated by the history of language -- one thing I liked about Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? was learning how we use words derived from words the Romans used).

And as the review from The Economist mentions, the history of words is the history of culture:

All this is another way of writing history. The Arab etymologies of “saffron”, “crimson” and “sugar” speak of England’s medieval trade with the Arab world. We have “cheque” and “tariff” from this source too, plus “arithmetic” and “algorithm”—just as we have “etch” and “sketch” from the Dutch, musical terms from the Italians and philosophical ones from the Germans. French nuance and finesse are everywhere. At every stage, the book is about people and ideas on the move, about invasion, refugees, immigrants, traders, colonists and explorers.

I hope my local library has a copy!

Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton

Just heard about another reading-related book:

Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton

The description from Daedalus Books (my favorite overstock bookseller) says:

Were you ever told that "Ring Around the Rosie" is about the Black Death of the Middle Ages? Or that the "whole nine yards" refers to the length of a machine gun ammo belt on a World War II fighter plane? Or that Eskimos have dozens or even hundreds of words for snow? Verbal debunker David Wilton is here to tell you that you have been taken in by a "linguistic urban legend." As popular and pervasive as their folktale counterparts, linguistic legends spread stories and "facts" about language and words. They are usually false—as Wilton explains in dozens of examples from "OK" to a certain four-letter word Norman Mailer spelled as "fug"—but they often contain elements of truth that reflect on us and our society.

Sounds like this book combines two topics of interest to me...words and history (particularly myth debunking)!

Though, I don't know anything about Wilton other than that he runs a website called wordorigins.org so I hope he's a legitimate expert on the topic. Looking at his resume on his website, I can see that he's worked in high-tech product management and security/defense and arms controls for most of his professional life. Hmm...