Ben Yagoda – författare

A spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms—for good or illThe British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America—from French fries to Awesome, man!—are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases—such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky—have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.After tracing Britishisms that entered the American vocabulary in the nineteenth century and during the world wars, Gobsmacked! discusses the most-used British terms in America today. It features chapters on the American embrace of British insults and curses, sports terms, and words about food and drinks. The book also explores the American adoption of British spellings, pronunciations, and grammar, and cases where Americans have misconstrued British expressions (for example, changing can’t be arsed to can’t be asked) or adopted faux-British usages, like pronouncing divisive as “divissive.” Finally, the book offers some guidance on just how many Britishisms an American can safely adopt without coming off like an arse.Rigorously researched and documented but written in a light, conversational style, this is a book that general readers and language obsessives will love. Its revealing account of a surprising and underrecognized language revolution might even leave them, well, gobsmacked.

The acclaimed author examines the importance of a writer’s voice—including interviews with Susan Orlean, Michel Chabon, Junot Díaz and others. In writing, style matters. Our favorite writers often entertain, move, and inspire us less by what they say than by how they say it. In The Sound on the Page, acclaimed author, teacher, and critic Ben Yagoda offers practical and incisive help for writers on developing and discovering their own style and voice. This wonderfully rich and readable book features interviews with more than 40 of our most important authors discussing their literary style, including: Dave Barry Harold Bloom Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Bill Bryson Michael Chabon Andrei Codrescu Junot Díaz Adam Gopnik Jamaica Kincaid Michael Kinsley Elmore Leonard Elizabeth McCracken Susan Orlean Cynthia Ozick Anna Quindlen Jonathan Raban David Thomson Tobias Wolff

The challenge is great. Despite all the talk about "family values", the family is besieged. The percentage of children living below the poverty line rose 49 percent from 1973 to 1992; American children are less likely to be immunized than those of any other developed nation; and many corporations still lag behind in areas such as maternity leave, while rewarding workers for long hours away from home. Moreover, the skyrocketing divorce rate and boom in the out-of-wedlock birth rate has relegated the "traditional family" to the realm of myth. Against this grim backdrop, Dr. Westheimer sees tremendous hope. She argues that the family is actually redefining itself in ways that will become more important - and more accepted - in the 21st Century. She points to changes in social attitudes and corporate and governmental policies that will allow for more unconventional but functioning family units, such as "step-" or "blended" families, and families headed by a gay single parent or couple. In addition, she sees generations pulling together for the sake of today's children, as more and more grandparents become active in their grandchildren's lives. In this book, help is available. Compiling an exhaustive list of family programs, resources, and self-help groups around the country and on the Internet, Dr. Westheimer tells parents how to get help for themselves and their children. And, sternly taking issue with new governmental legislation that claims to be "pro-family", she points our leaders in a bold new direction.

A guide that presents a blueprint for the survival of the family. The authors investigate the reasons why so many elements of modern culture appear counter-productive to family life. They also offer advice on such topics as personal communication, responsibilities, and entertainment alternatives.

From the ancient Greeks to the “irony-poisoned” Generation Z, an enlightening, entertaining, and surprising history of an essential idea and rhetorical tool that people love, hate, and love to debateFor 2,500 years, irony has been a subject of fascination—and vexation. In Isn’t It Ironic, acclaimed author Ben Yagoda presents a compelling tour of irony’s complicated history in literature, philosophy, the arts, and popular culture—from Plato and Jane Austen to Ralph Ellison and David Letterman, and from the post-9/11 “end of irony” to today’s debates about being “irony-pilled” or “irony-poisoned.”Beginning in ancient Greek comedy and adopted by Plato to describe Socrates, irony was viewed for two millennia as a potent rhetorical tool: making a point by saying something different (and sometimes opposite) from what you really meant. But the word took a turn in the nineteenth century, when a clergyman named Connop Thirlwell first to used “ironic” in the now familiar, but still controversial, sense of a striking incongruity between expected and actual outcomes. At the same time, philosophers like Kierkegaard proposed irony as nothing less than a core principle of life. The last century has seen ever-faster pendulum swings: irony outbreaks followed by backlashes against it.As it traces the changing meanings and fortunes of irony, Isn’t It Ironic explores masters of the trope such as Swift, Flaubert, Twain, and Hemingway, and anti-ironists like David Foster Wallace. It also argues that the most ironic century was the eighteenth, but the most ironic decade was the 1970s.A witty yet authoritative literary and cultural history, Isn’t It Ironic is a captivating demonstration of why irony has intrigued writers, artists, and their audiences for so many centuries.

A spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms—for good or illThe British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America—from French fries to Awesome, man!—are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases—such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky—have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.After tracing Britishisms that entered the American vocabulary in the nineteenth century and during the world wars, Gobsmacked! discusses the most-used British terms in America today. It features chapters on the American embrace of British insults and curses, sports terms, and words about food and drinks. The book also explores the American adoption of British spellings, pronunciations, and grammar, and cases where Americans have misconstrued British expressions (for example, changing can’t be arsed to can’t be asked) or adopted faux-British usages, like pronouncing divisive as “divissive.” Finally, the book offers some guidance on just how many Britishisms an American can safely adopt without coming off like an arse.Rigorously researched and documented but written in a light, conversational style, this is a book that general readers and language obsessives will love. Its revealing account of a surprising and underrecognized language revolution might even leave them, well, gobsmacked.

From an acclaimed cultural critic, a narrative and social history of the Great American Songwriting era. Everybody knows and loves the American Songbook. But it’s a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. All of a sudden, what came over the radio wasn’t Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin, but “Come on-a My House” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Elvis and rock and roll arrived a few years later, and at that point the game was truly up. What happened, and why? In The B Side, acclaimed cultural historian Ben Yagoda answers those questions in a fascinating piece of detective work. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources and on scores of interviews—the voices include Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Linda Ronstadt, and Herb Alpert—the book illuminates broad musical trends through a series of intertwined stories. Among them are the battle between ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc.; the revolution in jazz after World War II; the impact of radio and then television; and the bitter, decades-long feud between Mitch Miller and Frank Sinatra. The B Side is about taste, and the particular economics and culture of songwriting, and the potential of popular art for greatness and beauty. It’s destined to become a classic of American musical history.

What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book.In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. Read If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It and:Learn how to write better with classic advice from writers such as Mark Twain (“If you catch an adjective, kill it”), Stephen King (“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs”), and Gertrude Stein (“Nouns . . . are completely not interesting”). Marvel at how a single word can shift from adverb (“I did okay”), to adjective (“It was an okay movie”), to interjection (“Okay!”), to noun (“I gave my okay”), to verb (“Who okayed this?”), depending on its use. Avoid the pretentious preposition at, a favorite of real estate developers (e.g., “The Shoppes at White Plains”). Laugh when Yagoda says he “shall call anyone a dork to the end of his days” who insists on maintaining the distinction between shall and will. Read, and discover a book whose pop culture references, humorous asides, and bracing doses of discernment and common sense convey Yagoda’s unique sense of the “beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language.”

From a critically acclaimed cultural and literary critic, a definitive history and analysis of the memoir.From Saint Augustine?s Confessions to Augusten Burroughs?s Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. Cultural and literary critic Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings and Roman generals? journals all the way up to the banner year of 2007, which saw memoirs from and about dogs, rock stars, bad dads, good dads, alternadads, waitresses, George Foreman, Iranian women, and a slew of other illustrious persons (and animals). In a time when memoir seems ubiquitous and is still highly controversial, Yagoda tackles the autobiography and memoir in all its forms and iterations. He discusses the fraudulent memoir and provides many examples from the past?and addresses the ramifications and consequences of these books. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition?Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Yagoda also describes historical trends, such as Native American captive memoirs, slave narratives, courtier dramas (where one had to pay to NOT be included in a courtesan?s memoir). Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored.Yagoda''s elegant examination of memoir is at once a history of literature and taste, and an absorbing glimpse into what humans find interesting--one another.

Ben Yagoda''s How to Not Write Bad illustrates how we can all write better, more clearly, and for a wider readership.He offers advice on what he calls "not-writing-badly," which consists of the ability, first, to craft sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction (word choice), punctuation, and grammar, and that also display clarity, precision, and grace. Then he focuses on crafting whole paragraphs—with attention to cadence, consistency of tone, sentence transitions, and paragraph length.In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps we can all take to make our writing more effective, more interesting—and just plain better.