Customer Reviews

Words That Make a Difference: And How to Use Them in a Masterly Way

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Many readers who are drawn to books such as "Words that make a difference and how to use them in a masterly way" love the english language.

Frankly, I bought the book because I wanted to enlarge my vocabulary. I wanted to know what words could make me sound maybe just a LITTLE smarter than I really am! I didn't want to try to sound like an "intellectual," but I definitely wished to sound more intelligent to increase my career prospects.

There were, obviously, many words that I was familiar with, but there were also many words that, while I was aware of their meaning, I had simply forgotten about. I had fallen into a pattern of always using the same bland, redundant words while speaking.

"Words That Make a Difference" is an excellent book and if you use it at all, it is sure to increase both your vocabulary AND your confidence.

From "conterminous" (having a common boundary) to yahoo, this book provides a long list of interesting words with an appropriate context in how to use them. The book lists the word, the definition, and then a short excerpt from the New York Times. The reason the author selects these items from the New York Times is to give readers a feel for how these words are used in their appropriate context. And while some of us may loathe the times for its political bias, most would agree that there is an elegance to the paper that makes it interesting.

Thus, I highly recommend this book to SAT, GRE, word lovers, and general readers.

Michael Gordon

This book contains over 1000 you need to have in your vocabulary to express yourself. Each word has a definition and then a short passage from The New York Times that shows the word in context.

I'd say it's not only good for adults, but great for teens. For those teens studying for the SATs, this book would be a great place to start! The passages are engaging and memorable.

Why is Amazon pricing this book more than double what the publisher charges? $22 at Levenger.com; $45 at Amazon.com. I came to amazon.com because I thought I could get it cheaper.

Words That Make A Difference, Robert Greenman; Levenger Press (2000)


Something about this freebie gave me the creeps when I found it packed away inside the delivery of Levenger's massive mail-order metal file cabinet ensemble. Its title page banner, "With Compelling Examples from The New York Times," in particular activated the J. Arthur Rank start-of-the-movie gong.

But we were preoccupied with hauling each of the heavy components down to the basement. Then came trying to assemble the cabinets (failed); watching Elena's more expert attempt (also failed); dealing in fits & starts with various Levenger lunks (never the same one twice, on the phone); throwing in the towel & hauling everything back up the stairs (the dreadful thought of which motivated a 3rd & likewise failed assembly attempt); & finally, spending another afternoon re-packing all of it back into boxes so that Fed Ex could return crap to sender.

WMD, unreturned, sat on the shelf for a long while. Occasionally, I'd pull it down, thumb thru the definitions of useful but hardly "compelling" words (mostly high school-level, such as "inure," "mundane," "prolific") & then toss it back up on the hardwood.

In 2007, the "tossing the losers" project (pulping books that weren't worth saving) snagged WMD. It was then that the copyright page, read for the first time, unveiled the reason for that instinctive Day One eerie feeling.

It's an updated hand-me-down, originally published by Times Books (1983); palmed off to Farragut Publishing (1989); & then recycled again by Levenger as a give-away accompanying the shipments of what they sell; it is an also-ran bounced twice, first by NYT & then by Farragut - probably after both companies had conducted their own "toss" spring cleanings.

Judith Miller is among the NYT reporters graciously saluted (in a separate index) as the probable authors of sentences used to illustrate the use of selected words ("probable" in that Robert Greenman could not always identify the writers of the sentences; articles had often originally been run without bylines).

And while she wasn't the inspiration for the book's title abbreviation, "WMD" [an amusing "homo-acronym" for "Weapons of Mass Destruction"], the story now dovetails into ...

By 2007, the names of Judith Miller (resigned under pressure, in 2005) & Howell Raines (NYT editor; resigned under pressure in 2003) had been avoided like The Plague for some time at The Times. Do not speak of them now; do not speak of them ever.

But they will live on forever in the index of a book updated in 2000 that Times execs originally thought they had probably seen the last of in 1989 - & who could have hardly foreseen the respective messes that Raines & Miller had ended up getting themselves into, decades later.

And the index also features the name of the immortal Jayson Blair (whose incredible transgressions resulted in Raines's downfall).

This means there's a sentence somewhere in the book - illustrating the use of a chosen word - which had been originally in an article written by Blair... about an event that he might not have actually witnessed, but claimed that he had.

This is hardly what one would expect to see as a reason for buying & retaining Words That Make A Difference; but one, nonetheless, that a reader/aspiring writer with a good sense of humor would especially appreciate.

The best reason for retaining WMD, however, is Greenman's addendum on page 413: "Beyond The Comma [-] The Semicolon, Colon, Dash, & Parenthesis" - which should be mandated reading in every English course offered in our upper grade schools.

His clear, concise & excellent explanations as to the proper use of each of these symbols are very much appreciated by this writer & will be equally so by others who purchase this book.

*****

Well, that's the review. Say, does anyone know why the front cover of the book prominently on display on Words That Make A Difference's cover page is NOT Mr. Greenman's book - but that of a Harlequin pulp romance called "Stolen Summer"?

Practical joke?

If so, since WMD is a top-quality book, don't we deserve a better gag cover - not featuring sterile toothpaste-ad models, but instead, Fearless Fabio defying a wicked thunderstorm while battling pirates of the coast of Zanzibar, or saving damsels in distress from rampaging mice at the Bronx Zoo?