Shares information on a range of topics, including space, nature, and sports, to provide readers with facts that range from how hurricanes form and where the vikings raided to Earth's biggest volcano and most poisonous mushroom.

Discover an all-in-one encyclopedia that takes you on an explanatory tour of the world from your own body to outer space. Have you ever wondered how an email gets to someone on the other side of the world in just a few seconds or why it's a bad idea to stand under a tree during a thunderstorm? Discover the answers to all these questions and more with this mind-boggling books of facts. Each page of this mind-blowingly detailed and ambitious encyclopedia...

For the first time ever, this thrilling literary detective story, doubling as a celebration of words, language, people and one of mankind's greatest achievements, unravels the mystery of the contributors from around the world who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read, write and speak. "A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word"--

"A compelling history of the national conflicts that resulted from efforts to produce the first definitive American dictionary of English. ... [English professor] Peter Martin 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,...

"In 1934, Webster's Second was the great gray eminence of American dictionaries, with 600,000 entries and numerous competitors but no rivals. It served as the all-knowing guide to the world of grammar and information, a kind of one-stop reference work. In 1961, Webster's Third came along and ignited an unprecedented controversy in America's newspapers, universities, and living rooms. The new dictionary's editor, Philip Gove, had overhauled Merriam's...

"'Cuando Ari le dijo a su madre: -Mamá, ¿que es metáfora?, ella contestó: -Cariño, esa palabra aún te queda grande'. Asi comienza la aventura de la pequeña Ari, en la que se propone desvelar los misterios de las palabras que desconoce y que guarda con cariño en su caja de palabras."--P. 4 of cover. A little girl writes down all the words she does not understand and puts them in a box. For her eighth birthday, her parents give her a dictionary...

"Before the lost word, there was another. It arrived at the Scriptorium in a second-hand envelope, the old address crossed out and Dr Murray, Sunnyside, Oxford, written in its place. It was Da's job to open the post and mine to sit on his lap, like a queen on her throne, and help him ease each word out of its folded cradle. He'd tell me what pile to put it on and sometimes he'd pause, cover my hand with his, and guide my finger up and down and around...