William Safire

A compendium of more than two hundred classic and modern speeches includes Orson Welles eulogizing Darryl F. Zanuck, George Patton exhorting his D-Day troops, King Edward VIII abdicating his throne, and the never-delivered speech John F. Kennedy was sched

Great Speeches in History

Lend Me Your Ears

In a fictional exploration of America's early political scandals, James Thomson Callender, a muckraking journalist, reveals scandals in the lives of both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Scandalmonger

This basic grammar book highlights fifty mock rules, each using the mistake it purports to correct, such as the "Passive voice should never be used" and "A writer must not shift your point of view."

The Essential Misrules of Grammar

How Not to Write

A collection of the author's weekly columns "On language" from the New York Times magazine.

Language Maven Strikes Again

Peter Galassi

Susan Kismaric

This lively collection of 154 outstanding photographs, selected from more than five million in the picture library of The New York Times, spans the twentieth century. Here, as in the Times itself, photography's gaze is omnivorous. Included are vivid pictures of both world wars; of presidents, mayors, dictators, and celebrities; of Beatles fans and Halley's comet; of victims and perpetrators, riots and disasters; of Bill Bradley on the court and Willie Mays sliding into home - and a great deal more. Underlying them all is the gripping immediacy that makes news photography not only an indispensable presence in the daily paper but a vital part of history.

A Century of Photography from the New York Times

Pictures of the Times

Presents a wealth of humorous new investigations into language, usage, words, speech, and writing.

Wit and Wisdom from the Popular "On Language" Column in The New York Times Magazine

The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time

When it comes to the vagaries of language in American politics, its uses and abuses, its absurdities and ever-shifting nuances, its power to confound, obscure, and occasionally to inspire, William Safire is the language maven we most readily turn to for clarity, guidance, and penetrating, sometimes lacerating, wit. Safire's Political Dictionary is a stem-to-stern updating and expansion of the Language of Politics, which was first published in 1968 and last revised in 1993, long before such terms as Hanging Chads, 9/11 and the War on Terror became part of our everyday vocabulary. Nearly every entry in that renowned work has been revised and updated and scores of completely new entries have been added to produce an indispensable guide to the political language being used and abused in America today. Safire's definitions--discursive, historically aware, and often anecdotal--bring a savvy perspective to our colorful political lingo. Indeed, a Safire definition often reads like a mini-essay in political history, and readers will come away not only with a fuller understanding of particular words but also a richer knowledge of how politics works, and fails to work, in America. From Axis of Evil, Blame Game, Bridge to Nowhere, Triangulation, and Compassionate Conservatism to Islamofascism, Netroots, Earmark, Wingnuts and Moonbats, Slam Dunk, Doughnut Hole, and many others, this language maven explains the origin of each term, how and by whom and for what purposes it has been used or twisted, as well as its perceived and real significance. For anyone who wants to cut through the verbal haze that surrounds so much of American political discourse, Safire's Political Dictionary offers a work of scholarship, wit, insiderhood and resolute bipartisanship.

Safire's Political Dictionary

Full Disclosure

Leonard Safir

A treasury of great quotations on how to become successful as a leader with quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Dale Carnegie, Winston Churchill, and others.

A Treasury of Great Quotation for Those Who Aspire to Lead

Leadership

A Dictionary of Catchwords, Slogans, and Political Usage

The New Language of Politics

This twelfth collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist's "On language" column from the "New York Times Magazine" dissects curious coinages, trends, and errors in English usage.

Let a Simile be Your Umbrella

Roman

Der Anschlag

Collects tidbits of writing advice on everything from action to writers' block by masters of the craft

Writers Past and Present on How to Write Well

Good Advice on Writing

In the mid-1980's, the forty-first President of the United States is blinded in an assassination attempt and must cope with an international crisis and with domestic pressure demanding his resignation.

A Novel

These fifty humorous misrules of grammar will open the eyes of writers of all levels to fine style. How Not to Write is a wickedly witty book about grammar, usage, and style. William Safire, the author of the New York Times Magazine column "On Language," homes in on the "essential misrules of grammar," those mistakes that call attention to the major rules and regulations of writing. He tells you the correct way to write and then tells you when it is all right to break the rules. In this lighthearted guide, he chooses the most common and perplexing concerns of writers new and old. Each mini-chapter starts by stating a misrule like "Don't use Capital letters without good REASON." Safire then follows up with solid and entertaining advice on language, grammar, and life. He covers a vast territory from capitalization, split infinitives (it turns out you can split one if done meaningfully), run-on sentences, and semi-colons to contractions, the double negative, dangling participles, and even onomatopoeia. Originally published under the title Fumblerules.

How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar

“An international insider’s feel for a story with a master’s touch for telling it. Pick it up and you won’t put it down.”—Dan Rather In the wake of an important KGB agent's disappearance, an event of international proportions, journalist Irving Fein teams up with a television anchorwoman and stumbles on the story of a lifetime. “Immensely entertaining . . . engaging and cunningly plotted—with a walth of diverting asides on the self-importance of journalists, the duplicity of officialdom, the venality of big-time literary agents and other of civilized society’s burdens.”—Kirkus Reviews “The spy novel thought dead at the end of the Cold War, is alive and well, rising to new heights in Bill Safire’s Sleeper Spy.”—Richard Helms, former head of the CIA

Sleeper Spy

A follow-up to the highly successful Good Advice, here are more witty, insightful words of advice on every subject under the sun--from sources as diverse as Hippocrates and Babe Ruth.

Words of Wisdom

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist describes his lifelong fascination with Norma Loquendi--common speech--in a collection of columns that celebrates the mysteries and continual evolution of the English language.

In Love with Norma Loquendi

William Safire is the world's most widely read writer on the English language, and this collection of pieces drawn from his "On Language" column for The New York Times is Safirerawings.

More On Language from William Safire

You Could Look it Up

America's most entertaining language maven is back with more words to live by in his latest exploration of hot catchphrases, syntactical controversies, and other matters of national linguistic importance. Before you scratch that seven-year-itch, you might want to know where it came from. And before someone blurts, "You just don't get it," perhaps you should consult the Pulitzer Prize winning language columnist on the origins of that snappy feminist motto.

William Safire

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