The Years of Talking Dangerously (Hardcover)

~ Geoff Nunberg (Author)
Key Phrases: liberal label, national conversation, Fresh Air Commentary, New York Times, Los Angeles Times (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Booklist
“Full of fun little moments that should delight language mavens…. It’s the kind of book that you read, absorb, and then think about for a while afterward.”

San Francisco Chronicle
“[B]y paying attention to the changing nature of our common language, Nunberg has made it possible for us to feel less imprisoned by the idioms of the day, and perhaps more capable of creating (or at least laughing at) the idioms of tomorrow.”

Product Description

“There has never been,” Nunberg writes, “an age as wary as ours of the tricks words can play, obscuring distinctions and smoothing over the corrugations of the actual world.... Yet as advertisers and marketers know, our mistrust of words doesn’t inoculate us against them.” These are the years of talking dangerously, and Nunberg is a sure guide to the pitfalls. With illuminating intelligence and devastating humor, Nunberg decodes the changing syntax of Time Magazine, explains why grammar buffs are drawn to sarcasm, and deftly unpacks the telling phrases of our national conversation, from progressive to elite to change—not to mention national conversation itself.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (May 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586487450
• ISBN-13: 978-1586487454
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #523,429 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The only thing dangerous about this collection is giving it more than the little time and attention that it deserves, August 17, 2009

By	Todd Stockslager (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews

Collections of essays suffer from a lack of cohesiveness, consistency, and cogent purpose, and Nunberg's collection of essays collected from his New York Times' columns and NPR "Fresh Air" commentaries is an apt example of this flaw. The subject of language and vocabulary is especially susceptible to detailed and categorical organization (alphabetical, for example, in the case of a dictionary), so the scattershot results of an essay collection are also especially noticeable.

All of which might be excusable if Nunberg's essays were more linguistic then polemic in nature. At least then the reader could place the essays in her own mental taxonomy, rather than wasting valuable time and attention to rationalize or step around the political snobbery in many of the essays. The useful and interesting linguistic content in this slim volume would be easily covered in a 90-minute lecture, assuming a professor took the time to extract it, organize it, and explicate it.

The cover blurbs quote fulsome praise of Nunberg as a "standup linguist" whose writing is "especially valuable in revealing how words inform our understanding of issues." In fact, I found his essays neither particularly funny nor informative. The only thing dangerous about this collection is giving it more than the little time and attention that it deserves.