Décharné traces the colorful history of slang, from Elizabethan highwaymen to the rap and hip-hop of today. He shows how meanings change over years; introduces us to flying aces, pickpockets, and carnival geeks who have left their impression on our language; and shows how slang leaks into the mainstream to infuse language with vitality.

"In this book, Paul A. Thomas-a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who has accrued almost 60,000 edits since he started editing in 2007-breaks down the history of the free encyclopedia and explains the process of becoming an editor"--

15-year-old Cher, the matchmaking Beverly Hills High schooler, has shopping and boys on her mind. She leads a hectic lifestyle but keeps it all together until she starts to fall in love and finds she's 'clueless'. A loose adaptation of Emma, Jane Austen's 19th-century comedy of manners.

"A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties...

Twelve-year-old Homer, a poor but clever orphan, has extraordinary adventures after running away from his evil uncle to rescue his brother, who has been sold into service in the Civil War.

"A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities...

"Bright: A Memoir, the first full-length essay collection from acclaimed poet Kiki Petrosino, is a work of lyric nonfiction, offering glimpses of a life lived between cultural worlds. "Bright," a slang term used to describe light-skinned people of interracial American ancestry, becomes the starting point for an extended meditation on the author's upbringing in a mixed Black and Italian American family. Alternating moments of memoir, archival research,...

On the edge of twenty-seven, Jazzy hatches a plan for her and her best girlfriends: Sher, Imo, and Fann. Before the year is out, these Sarong Party Girls will all have spectacular weddings to expat ang moh-- caucasian-- husbands, with Chanel babies (half-white children--the ultimate status symbol) quickly to follow. Razor-sharp, spunky, and cheerfully brand-obsessed, Jazzy is a woman who plays to win. As she fervently pursues her quest to find the...

"Find your voice and use it to lead us to a better future, with this game-changing blueprint for redefining what power and authority sound like--from a Hollywood communication expert. Anyone who has ever been told "You should speak up!" during a meeting at the office, a group project at school, or even a conversation among friends can attest to the misunderstanding at the heart of that demand. For those of us--including women, people of color, immigrants,...

"The legacies of Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn seem like they might be with us forever. Yet Christopher Elias finds in them startling new connections between gender, sexuality, and national security in 20th-century US politics--a paradigm he christens "security state masculinity." Elias integrates biographies of the trio with a history of gossip magazines and their tactics--such as insinuation, guilt by association, hyperbole, and alarmism,...