John Pollack

A former speechwriter for Bill Clinton provides a light-hearted exploration of puns, including the brain science and history behind them, as well as how they play out in pop culture.

How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

The Pun Also Rises

Daryl Houston

I was very excited to read this book when I ran across the title on a blog recently. It was fine, a nice little overview of how and why we may have come to pun. Neither obsessive and terribly thorough history nor simple humor writing, the book occupies for me a weird spot that falls short of rigorous scholarship (which would have been interesting) but goes beyond the simply light-hearted treatment. I sort of found myself wishing Pollack had picked one extreme or the other. It's a quick and pretty entertaining read. Sometimes he sneaks puns in that I wish he hadn't. Puns do belong in a book like this, and there were plenty that made me giggle -- some that I shared with my family -- but some he sprinkled in were too big a reach for the payoff. He could have let those go. (I will say that it's less annoying even at its worst than Lederer's pun book, which I read years ago.) I'm glad I read it but think my expectations may have been too high.

Amelia Macy

Emma Bose

Lindsy Rice

Daniel Kilby

A former speechwriter for Bill Clinton provides a light-hearted exploration of puns, including the brain science and history behind them, as well as how they play out in pop culture. Reprint.

The Pun Also Rises How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

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