Category Archives: Language

Review of The Truth About English Grammar by Geoffrey K. Pullum

Posted on January 15, 2025 by Ed Battistella

The Truth About English Grammar by Geoffrey K. Pullum (Polity Press, 2024) Many years ago, I took a freshman course called English Grammar, taught by the Renaissance scholar Bridget Gellert Lyons. In that class, we read A Short Introduction to … Continue reading →

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What I’m Reading: Mosley, Kuang, Gladwell

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Ed Battistella

Farewell, Amethystine by Walter Mosely By my count, Walter Mosely has written 17 Easy Rawlins mysteries (and another 15 featuring Socrates Fortlow, Leonid McGill, King Oliver and Fearless Jones). I try to read them all though may have missed a … Continue reading →

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Dogwhistles and Figleaves

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Ed Battistella

A while ago, I reviewed Jennifer Mather Saul’s Dogwhistles and Figleaves (Oxford UP, 2024) for Choice. It occurred to me that the timeliness of the book warranted a longer discussion and this it. Saul is a philosopher at the University … Continue reading →

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An Interview with Christina Ward, author of Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat—An American History

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Ed Battistella

Christina Ward is an independent cultural historian of food and food history, exploring what we eat and why we eat it. She is the author of American Advertising Cookbooks-How Corporations Taught Us To Love, Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O, and Preservation-The … Continue reading →

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