Words on Words: Five Timelessly Stimulating Books About Language

What single Chinese men have to do with evolution and insults from Virginia Woolf.

We love, love, love words and language. And what better way to celebrate them than through the written word itself? Today, we turn to five of our favorite books on language, spanning the entire spectrum from serious science to serious entertainment value.

THE STUFF OF THOUGHT

Harvard’s Steven Pinker is easily the world’s most prominent and prolific psycholinguist, whose multi-faceted work draws on visual cognition, evolutionary science, developmental psychology and computational theory of mind to explain the origin and function of language. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature reverse-engineers our relationship with language, exploring what the words we use reveal about the way we think. The book is structured into different chapters, each looking at a different tool we use to manage information flow, from naming to swearing and politeness to metaphor and euphemism. From Shakespeare to pop songs, Pinker uses a potent blend of digestible examples and empirical evidence to distill the fundamental fascination of language: What we mean when we say.

Sample The Stuff of Thought with Pinker’s fantastic 2007 TED talk:

THE SNARK HANDBOOK

In 2009, The Snark Handbook: A Reference Guide to Verbal Sparring became an instant favorite with its enlightening and entertaining compendium of history’s greatest masterpieces in the art of mockery, contextualizing today’s era of snark-humor and equipping us with the shiniest verbal armor to thrive as victor knights in it. Last year, author Lawrence Dorfman released a worthy sequel: The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition: Comebacks, Taunts, and Effronteries — a linguistic arsenal full of strategic instructions on how and when to throw the jabs of well-timed snark alongside a well-curated collection of history’s most skilled literary insult-maestros.

Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” ~ Mark Twain on Jane Austen

It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what’s between her ears instead of her legs.” ~ Katherine Hepburn on Sharon Stone

I am reading Henry James… and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.” ~ Virginia Woolf on Henry James

He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet.” ~ Capote on Faulkner

Ultimately, the book is the yellow brick road to what, deep down, you know you always knew you were: Better than everybody else. (Read our full review here.)

KEYWORDS

Originally published in 1976 by legendary Welsh novelist and critic Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society offers a fascinating and timeless lens on language from a cultural rather than etymological standpoint, examining the history of over 100 familiar yet misunderstood or ambiguous words, from ‘art’ to ‘nature’ to ‘welfare’ to ‘originality.’

The book begins with an essay on ‘culture’ itself, dissecting the historical development and social appropriation of this ubiquitous and far-reaching semantic construct. It paints a living portrait of the constant transformation of culture as reflected in natural language. So seminal was Williams’ work that in 2005, Blackwell attempted an ambitious update to his text in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society.

IN OTHER WORDS

As beautiful as the English language may be, it isn’t without insufficiencies. C. J. Moore’s curates the most poetic of them — rich words and phrases from other langauges that don’t have an exact translation in English, but convey powerful, deeply human concepts, often unique to the experience of the culture from which they came. (For instance, in Tierra del Fuego there is a specific word — mamihlapinatapei — for that an expressive, meaningful romantic silence between two people. And in China, gagung literally means “bare sticks” but signifies the growing population of men who will will remain unmarried because China’s one-child policy and unabashed preference for male progeny has reduced the proportion of women.)

Witty and illuminating, the book covers 10 different types of languages spanning across various eras and locales, from ancient and classical to indigenous to African to Scandinavian, digging to find the precious meanings lost in translation.

I’M NOT HANGING NOODLES ON YOUR EARS

From researcher Jag Bhalla comes I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World — an entertaining piece of linguistic tourism, exploring how different cultures construct their worldview through the nuances of language.

The book is divided into different themes, from food to love to just about everything in between, that reveal specific cultural dispositions towards these subjects through the language in which they are framed.

And on a semi-aside, @hangingnoodles is a must-follow on Twitter, a treasure trove of interestingness at the intersection of science and culture.

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5 Painfully Hilarious Politically Incorrect Books

What pedicured pets have to do with Hitler and the supremacy of Y chromosomes.

There’s just too much political correctness in the world these days, stiffening up society like the sun does roadkill. So, today, we turn to five books that flip political correctness on its head and help us loosen up with irony, mockery and sarcasm aimed at the very pillars of PC. Unabashedly offensive and outrageously absurd, they let us, as we laugh through our tears, engage in timely and relevant social commentary through the lens of humor.

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE

We’ve been fans of Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like since it first launched nearly 3 years ago. In fact, it was so excellent that it wasn’t long until it joined the ranks of blog-turned-book success stories and Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions was born: An ingenious portrait of today’s “white” person as a psychographic subset, not an ethnic one — you know, the troops of organic, iconic, iPhone-slinging, Prius-driving educated liberal twenty- and thirtysomethings — that will make you feel distinctly less unique than you think you are.

Browse the full list of stuff and you’ll see what we mean.

PETS WHO WANT TO KILL THEMSELVES

People love their pets. Some just love them a tad too much. Pet pedicures, doggie gyms and an entire thriving mini-fashion industry of pet apparel all speak to a frighteningly frivolous obsession, never mind how its objects might actually feel about it. Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves: Featuring Over 150 Suicidal Pets! is a collection of photos depicting miserable-looking pets, paired with laugh-out-funny captions that capture the most absurd extreme of this domestication abuse epidemic — a tragicomic encapsulation of today’s most outrageous petkeeping.

120 FUNNY SWASTIKA CARTOONS

From acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist Sam Gross comes We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons, which we’ve featured before — a collection of outrageous and poignant visual reflections on the reactions, emotions and controversy the notorious symbol has been triggering for more than half a century. Part exercise in purging some of humanity’s heaviest burdens through humor, part witty meditation on one of history’s darkest episodes, the book lives up to the promise of its title: It will make you laugh.

MEN ARE BETTER THAN WOMEN

This is where things start to get really hairy: The unequivocally titled Men Are Better Than Women by the appropriately named Dick Masterson (surely, a pseudonym) is a practical handbook for the art of chauvinism. The magnum-sized volume offers a plethora of affirmations of man’s greatness, backed by solid man-logic and offering “an immediate payoff.”

If Sacha-Cohen-type humor is your thing, let Masterson — let’s just call him Dick, shall we? — take you for a dance along the line between outrageous offensiveness and amusing absurdity.

LOOK AT THIS F*CKING HIPSTER

Another blog-turned-book deal, based on the popular Tumblr of the same name, Joe Mande’s Look at This F*cking Hipster is belly-achingly hilarious collection of photos, paired with appropriately snarky captions, alongside short essays poking witty fun at the cultural phenomenon that is the hipster.

From a taxonomy of hipster types to a brief history of the hipster through the ages to celebrity hipsters, the book is a kind of fascinating remote people-watching that, finally, lets you stare, point and judge like you always wanted to in The Burg.

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7 Essential Books on the Art and Science of Happiness

From Plato to Buddha, or what imperfection has to do with the neuroscience of the good life.

If you, like me, are fascinated by the human quest to understand the underpinnings of happiness but break out in hives at the mere mention of self-help books, you’re in luck: I’ve sifted through my personal library, a decade’s worth of obsessive reading, to surface seven essential books on the art and science of happiness, rooted in solid science, contemporary philosophy and cross-disciplinary insight. From psychology and neuroscience to sociology and cultural anthropology to behavioral economics, these essential reads illuminate the most fundamental aspiration of all human existence: How to avoid suffering and foster lasting well-being.

THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS

The question of what makes us happy is likely as old as human cognition itself and has occupied the minds of philosophers, prophets and scientists for millennia. In The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, psychology professor Jonathan Haidt unearths ten great theories of happiness discovered by the thinkers of the past, from Plato to Jesus to Buddha, to reveal a surprising abundance of common tangents. (For example, from Shakespeare: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” From Buddha: “Our life is the creation of our mind.”)

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brains work so well that our reasoning can work at all.”

Haidt takes this ambitious analysis of philosophical thought over the centuries and examines it through the prism of modern psychology research to extract a remarkably compelling blueprint for optimizing the human condition for happiness.

STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS

Nearly four years ago, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert published Stumbling On Happiness. To this day, it remains the best-researched yet captivatingly digestible book on the art and science of happiness, exposing with equal parts wit and scientific rigor the many misconceptions we have about happiness, the tricks our minds play on us in its pursuit and how the limitations of our imagination get in the way of the grand quest.

Sample the book’s nuggets of wisdom with Gilbert’s excellent TED talk from 2008:

We have within us the capacity to manufacture the very quality we are constantly chasing.” ~ Daniel Gilbert

THE ART OF HAPPINESS

Science may be a reliable source of illumination, but it would be short-sighted to let it completely eclipse centuries of spiritual tradition investigating the underbelly of human nature. There is hardly a cultural figure more revered in that realm than His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

The Art of Happiness, a landmark articulation of the philosophy of peace and compassion as a foundation of happiness by Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, has served as a powerful guide to well-being for secular and spiritual happiness seekers alike for the past twelve years.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~ His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Both timeless and timely in today’s cultural landscape of ubiquitous moral, political and environmental turmoil, where it’s all the more important to develop the skills for finding inner peace amids chaos, The Art of Happiness captures with eloquent simplicity the most important point of all: Happiness, like any art, requires diligent study and disciplined practice.

HAPPINESS

French scientist-turned-Buddhist-monk Matthieu Ricard is one of our greatest intellectual heroes. The son of prominent French philosopher and intellectual Jean-François Revel, Ricard got a degree in molecular genetics, then decided to step away from his career in science and devote his life to the study of Buddhism. His inner scientist, however, remained wide awake as he developed a keen interest in the neurological effects of meditation and mindfulness training.

In Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, he distills 25 centuries of Buddhist spiritual tradition alongside bleeding-edge neuroscience and the most compelling findings of Western cognitive psychology — an intelligent and refreshing vision for fusing the life of the mind and the life of the heart into a path of genuine psychoemotional fulfillment.

For a taste of Ricard’s genius, don’t miss his fantastic TED talk, one of our top five of all time:

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT

On a rainy afternoon in 2006, New York Magazine writer Gretchen Rubin found herself having one of those inevitable carpe diem epiphanies about the fleeting nature of life and the importance of savoring the moment. Instead of shrugging it off as a contrived truism, however, Rubin decided to turn it into an experiment: She set out to test humanity’s ample arsenal of theories about what makes us happy, from ancient philosophies to pop culture prescriptions to the latest scientific studies. She chronicled the experience on her blog and eventually adapted it in The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun — an enlightening and entertaining record of her journey through awkward moments and surprising successes that together weave a rich mesh of existential insight.

We reviewed it in full in 2009 and, after having the pleasure of meeting Gretchen recently, fully recommend the The Happiness Project as a profound yet pragmatic guide to personal growth.

AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS

Back in the day, we had the pleasure of studying under Dr. Martin Seligman, father of the thriving positive psychology movement — a potent antidote to the traditional “disease model” of psychology, which focuses on how to relieve suffering rather than how to amplify well-being. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment offers a toolkit for harnessing our core strengths to make everyday interactions more fulfilling, complete with a range of assessment tools and self-tests rooted in cognitive science and behavioral psychology research.

Relieving the states that make life miserable… has made building the states that make life worth living less of a priority. The time has finally arrived for a science that seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the ‘good life.'” ~ Martin Seligman

Seligman gives a provocative primer on positive psychology in this must-see TED talk:

THE GIFTS OF IMPERFECTION

Brené Brown is no ordinary sociologist. She calls herself, quite accurately, a “researcher-storyteller” and her seminal research on vulnerability, shame and empathy has brought about a whole new understanding of an intricate dimension of human authenticity and worth: Something she calls “wholeheartedness.” Her most recent book, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, isn’t the self-help bible the title may mislead you to expect. Rather, it’s a treasure trove of insight on emotional health and psychological balance, rooted in a decade’s worth of rigorous research but delivered in a deeply human way. It’s so fantastic, in fact, that when we first featured it late last year, it quickly became one of the most-read, most-shared Brain Pickings articles in all of 2010.

Brown’s talk from TEDxHouston is our favorite TEDx talk of all time and absolutely unmissable, so we’ll repost it here in case you did miss it:

In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen — really seen.

The Gifts of Imperfection examines one of the greatest foundations of happiness — our sense of and need for belonging, both with others and in our own skin — and brings to it a level of authenticity and understanding that fundamentally changes the way we relate to ourselves and each other.

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Voyeurism Spotlight: Where and How Creators Create

Happiness, messiness and what unstaged photos have to do with setting the stage for genius.

Yesterday, we took a rare peek inside the sketchbooks of 26 of the world’s hottest street artists. Today, we’re turning that same voyeuristic eye to the broader world of creative professionals — designers, illustrators, writers and other exceptional creators — whose workspaces and toolboxes are like miniature museums of their unique brand of creative curiosity.

FROM YOUR DESKS

Since the dawn of creative time, an artist’s studio has been a reflection of his or her creative process — a private, sacred and deeply personal temple of meaning and ideation. From Your Desks explores the contemporary incarnation of the artist’s studio — the creator’s desk — through candid, unstaged portraits of workspaces.

A Desk is where we work. Symbolic. Psychical. Present. A second home. A Desk is a platform. A hearth. Roots are planted. It’s where upon hours on hours pass.”

The project encompasses a wide range of creators and workspaces, from artists like Maureen Cavanaugh and John Baldessari, to writers and bloggers like P.D. Smith and Steven Heller, to business mavericks like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, and even the multiple-person teams behind some of our favorite creative projects, from A Journey Round My Skull, creativity curator extraordinaire, to the lovely Poketo.

FYD is the brainchild of writer, photographer and blogger Kate Donnelly.

ON MY DESK

On My Desk is the slightly more promiscuous predecessor of From Your Desks. Since 2006, the site has served as a place for designers, artists, illustrators and other creative types to share their work and workspaces. It’s closer to a crowdsourcing project than a curatorial one, since just about anyone can apply for a blogger account to post to the site, but it’s fascinating and delightful nonetheless.

On My Desk is the brainchild of UK illustrator Linzie Hunter, whom you might remember from our Spam As Art omnibus.

WHAT’S IN YOUR TOOLBOX

design*sponge, one of our favorite design blogs, has lesser-known yet wonderful section entitled What’s Inside Your Toolbox, probing into the creative processes of prominent designers, illustrators and artists by way of the tools they can’t live without. From legendary tastemaker and Anthropologie buyer Ketih Johnson to Brain Pickings favorite Maira Kalman, the rubric covers a vibrant spectrum of creators.

The column always features the same fill-in-the-blank question — “When I am in my studio, I feel______” — which inevitably reveals one simple yet recurring truth: There’s an enormous and profound correlation between happiness and creativity.

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