Ben Yagoda

Offers a guide for crafting sentences and paragraphs that are both effective and interesting and that combine clarity with correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them

How to Not Write Bad

The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It

Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing

The Sound on the Page

The New Yorker and the World It Made

About Town

From a critically acclaimed master of language, a look at the trends, phenomena, and battles on the front lines of modern American English. In You Need to Read This, language expert Ben Yagoda writes about the cuckoo things we have done to the English language. His witty, insightful, and wise observations and advice are gathered here together for the first time. From the phenomenon of curate, to the rise of the glottal stop, to the prevalence of starting sentences with so, to the story of an epithet of the moment (douchey), Yagoda chronicles the trends in our language. In the second part of You Need to Read This, he examines the issue of mistakes and “mistakes,” and the battles between prescriptivists, who nitpick grammar, and descriptivists, who defend new expressions and casual usage. Yagoda is on the front lines of the language wars, and you need to read this book to find out which side you’re on.

The Death of the Imperative Mode, the Rise of the American Glottal Stop, the Biz arre Popularity of "Amongst," and Other Cuckoo Things That Have Happened to the

You Need to Read This

Biography of American humorist and entertainer Will Rogers discussing his career and personal life.

A Biography

Will Rogers

The author of The Sound on the Page offers an irreverent but insightful look at the nine parts of speech in the English language, with whimsical guidelines on how to use adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs appropriately. 35,000 first printing.

The Parts of Speech for Better And/or Worse

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill it

Kevin Kerrane

Historical and international in scope, a unique anthology traces the course of literary journalism and nonfiction prose from its origins in the eighteenth century to today, from Daniel Defoe to Joseph Mitchell to Richard Ben Cramer. 15,000 first printing.

A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism

The Art of Fact

a history

Memoir

Ruth Westheimer

Dr Ruth Westheimer is everyone's favourite sex therapist. All in a Lifetime is the memoir of her journey from the horrors of war to the fulfillment of the American dream. The book is as warm, humorous, and candid as Dr Ruth herself.

An Autobiography

All in a Lifetime

From Augustine's Confessions to Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses S. Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. "As Yagoda says: 'Memoir has become the central form of the culture: not only the way stories are told, but the way arguments are put forth, products and properties marketed, ideas floated, acts justified, reputations constructed or salvaged. How did we come to this pass? The only way to answer that question is to go back a couple of thousand years and tell the story from the beginning,'" which is just what Yagoda does in this "excellent" history (The Washington Post).

A History

From an acclaimed cultural critic, a narrative and social history of the Great American Songwriting era. Everybody knows and loves the American Songbook. But it’s a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. All of a sudden, what came over the radio wasn’t Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin, but “Come on-a My House” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Elvis and rock and roll arrived a few years later, and at that point the game was truly up. What happened, and why? In The B Side, acclaimed cultural historian Ben Yagoda answers those questions in a fascinating piece of detective work. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources and on scores of interviews—the voices include Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Linda Ronstadt, and Herb Alpert—the book illuminates broad musical trends through a series of intertwined stories. Among them are the battle between ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc.; the revolution in jazz after World War II; the impact of radio and then television; and the bitter, decades-long feud between Mitch Miller and Frank Sinatra. The B Side is about taste, and the particular economics and culture of songwriting, and the potential of popular art for greatness and beauty. It’s destined to become a classic of American musical history.

The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song

The B Side

In writing, style matters. Our favorite writers often entertain, move, and inspire us less by what they say than by how they say it. In The Sound on the Page, acclaimed author, teacher, and critic Ben Yagoda offers practical and incisive help for writers on developing and discovering their own style and voice. This wonderfully rich and readable book features interviews with more than 40 of our most important authors discussing their literary style, including: Dave Barry Harold Bloom Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Bill Bryson Michael Chabon Andrei Codrescu Junot Díaz Adam Gopnik Jamaica Kincaid Michael Kinsley Elmore Leonard Elizabeth McCracken Susan Orlean Cynthia Ozick Anna Quindlen Jonathan Raban David Thomson Tobias Wolff

From a critically acclaimed cultural and literary critic, a definitive history and analysis of the memoir. From Saint Augustine?s Confessions to Augusten Burroughs?s Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. Cultural and literary critic Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings and Roman generals? journals all the way up to the banner year of 2007, which saw memoirs from and about dogs, rock stars, bad dads, good dads, alternadads, waitresses, George Foreman, Iranian women, and a slew of other illustrious persons (and animals). In a time when memoir seems ubiquitous and is still highly controversial, Yagoda tackles the autobiography and memoir in all its forms and iterations. He discusses the fraudulent memoir and provides many examples from the past?and addresses the ramifications and consequences of these books. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition?Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Yagoda also describes historical trends, such as Native American captive memoirs, slave narratives, courtier dramas (where one had to pay to NOT be included in a courtesan?s memoir). Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored. Yagoda's elegant examination of memoir is at once a history of literature and taste, and an absorbing glimpse into what humans find interesting--one another.

Offers a critical and cultural history of "The New Yorker" from its founding in 1919 through 1987, discussing the evolution of the magazine's content over the years and its role in American cultural life

Ben Yagoda

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