The Devil's Dictionary
Author: Ambrose Bierce, Ambrose Bierce (Preface by)
ISBN: 9780486275420
publisher: Dover Publications
publisher Date: 05/20/1993
Price: 3.5
eBookPrice: 1
Schools: University at Albany (SUNY)
Description: Born in Ohio in 1842, journalist, short-story writer and critic Ambrose Bierce developed into one of this country's most celebrated and cynical wits - a merciless "American Swift" whose literary barbs were aimed at folly, self-delusion, politics, business, reliegion, literature and the arts. In this splendid "dictionary" of epigrams, essays, verses and vignettes, you'll find over 1,000 pointed definitions, e.g. Congratulation ("The civility of envy"), Coward ("One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs") and Historian ("A broad-guage gossip"). Anyone who likes to laugh will love the Devil's Dictionary. Anyone looking for a bon mot to enliven their next speech, paper or conversation will have a field day thumbing through what H.L. Mencken called "some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language."