The Dictionary Wars: The American Fight over the English Language

A compelling history of the national conflicts that resulted from efforts to produce the first definitive American dictionary of English

The Dictionary Wars recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for di...