Dr. Glenn A. Bassett

When I first started this book by Bassett I thougit it was a book by a liberal, and while that may be true, he does not write as one because he makes a gold attempt to write in an unbiased manner. He brings us a clear exposition from a wealth of material which clarifies our political past.
Bassett has shown some of the errors of the conservatives, but also some of the liberals. His proposition as well as what might be his position is that the centrist position in politics works because rather than being "hardened" in an unmovable position there is room for the parties to compromise and find working solutions. I welcome this book.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" "To Whom It Might Concern" and "Tell Me About the United Methodist Church.… (meer)

My interest in language made me the perfect target audience for this book. My graduate studies in linguistics, which came from the same source, also gives me the tools to express what's wrong with it.

WordPlay is the sort of book where exuberance for the subject matter cannot make up for poorly researched and often contentless prose. The author is more concerned with making statements about the human condition and the importance of communication than he is with presenting evidence for his statements, or even connecting them into a well-reasoned argument. And when every other reference is to Wikipedia... well, let's just say that you would be better off reading those same Wikipedia articles and drawing your own conclusions.

The book is interesting only insofar as the insight it gives you into the author's opinions, and many of those are representative of trends in scholarly thought that have been abandoned for years. (The strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, for example.)

Ultimately forgettable, WordPlay is a book that left my library about as quickly as it entered it.… (meer)

I thought this book would be about linguistics-related topics, but since the thesis (one of them?) is that words make us human, it turns out to be a book about humanity. It’s a bit incoherent. There’s some interesting stuff at the beginning about words that are untranslatable to other languages, and what that says about culture, but I quickly grew to distrust the broad stereotypes in which the author spoke. Honestly, I spent some time wondering whether this was a deliberate parody of a certain style (the introduction is almost entirely in the passive voice, and not in a good way), but I don’t think so. Here are some words from his description of Arab culture/life: backward, brutal, cruel, volatile, bleakness, hostile and fragmented. And about illiteracy: “It can only be guessed how much greater authority there is in writing for those who cannot read. Hearing the word read by literate authority must be an awesome experience…. To the illiterate, writing is magical, reading is awesome, perhaps terrifying.” Yes, though ‘it can only be guessed’ what the experience of the illiterate is like—apparently no one is allowed to ask?—fortunately, he knows anyway. At some point continuing felt like cruelty, and not just to me, as when he points to a Brandweek survey of its readers, who work in advertising, to show the power of words: they picked new brand names with the greatest marketing appeal: Spykes, a malt beverage (pulled from the market because its colors and flavors appealed to underage drinkers); Tailwind for running shoes (a Nike brand); go! for a new airline (out of business); Aloft for a new hotel (a Starwood brand); Enjuvia for a new menopause drug; and Exubera for a new insulin brand (approved by the FDA but dumped by Pfizer). Now, it’s true that almost every new product fails, but if you wanted to convince me that words are powerful … some of these ought to have been real successes.… (meer)