An engrossing compendium for word nerds and armchair sociologists alike.
A sprightly assortment of insider lingo and esoterica drawn from a host of subcultures.
With his 2002 book Schott’s Original Miscellany, Schott launched a peculiar cottage industry by sharing obscure details and terminology from a variety of sources, from martinis to the military. This hefty and colorful ersatz encyclopedia is filled with deep dives on communities from Swifties to reality-TV producers to crypto bros and more. Though it doesn’t announce itself as such, the book is largely a kind of passkey into the world of luxe living: Schott reveals the inside chatter of sommeliers (a big spender on wine is “dropping the hammer”), fine art auctioneers (a “white glove sale” means every lot has sold), and Savile Row tailors (“W.F.B.” cloth is fit for weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs). But he recognizes every in-group has its own brand of chatter, including graffiti artists, Starbucks baristas, sneaker collectors, and dog walkers. Best of all is when Schott can merge high and low communities: A virtuosic chapter explores the terminology of fox hunters as well as “sabs,” the animal-liberation saboteurs who covertly undermine the hunts. (Hunter language is printed in black, sab language in red.) Throughout, Schott cultivates a wry, bemused tone, with a finely tuned ear for terms that are thick in irony (among stuntpersons, a well-performed fall is a “wreck”) and occupational gallows humor (doctors and nurses call gonorrhea, aka the clap, a “round of applause”). There are also well-done visual entries explaining the gestures of trading-floor workers, restaurateurs, and protesters. The glossaries don’t always engage the casual reader—only a gondolier would care to know so much about the profession—but the book is largely inspiring, suggesting the world is filled to bursting with communities with their own secret codes.
An engrossing compendium for word nerds and armchair sociologists alike.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781523532261
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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