Description (from Amazon.com):
If you’ve ever become irritated with the willful misuse or redefinition of important words in 21st-century politically correct discussions of religion, politics, economics, or philosophy, then this is a book for you. Authors Cipher and Nassivera confront the contradictions of sloppy speech and sloppy thinking head on, in this updated re-do of the humorous American classic by Ambrose Bierce. This book will make you laugh, make you think, make you argue, and make you mad. It will give you plenty to talk about with your friends–and with your enemies.
Overall Rating: 3 stars
Reviewer’s Note:
Normally, Red Adept Reviews are broken into three sections, each rated independently, and then averaged for the Overall Rating. The sections are Plot, Characters, and Writing Style. As this book is written in dictionary format, there is no plot and there are no characters, so this review will not follow the Red Adept standard format. I will review based on Content and on Writing Style.
Writing Style: 3 stars
This book is admittedly an update, and possibly a parody, of the classic Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, written in the early part of the 20th century. I feel that in order to appreciate a parody, you need to have at least a passing familiarity with the original; therefore I downloaded the Devil’s Dictionary to skim through before starting this book. While I do not intend to compare the two, I will say up front that I enjoyed the original much more than the update. Bierce’s humor is what is now called ‘snark’, and it has stood the test of time.
The premise of this book is somewhat a cross between Devil’s Dictionary and C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. It purports to be a ‘dictionary’ written by a devil (or maybe THE Devil, based on the 2nd author’s name) and accidentally found and published by the primary author. The tone is extremely irreverent and, in places, anti-religious. The humor was mostly from exposing and poking fun at our careful politically correct word usage, which frequently changes the ‘true’ meaning of a word to the point where we use words to mean something radically different than their actual dictionary definitions. Working in a large company, I am totally familiar with this use, and abuse, of the English language. But, even so, I somehow did not find the humor in the definitions. They came across as bitter rather than satirical, and mean-spirited instead of humorous. However, I can see that others, with a different sense of humor than mine, may find the political satire to be very amusing. This is a book that will offend some and delight others.
Content: 3 stars
As I said above, this book did not come across as humorous to me. However, it was obvious that the author had put a great deal of thought and research into the definitions he came up with for many of the politically-charged terms. Despite the tone in which they were written, some of the definitions showed considerable insight into human nature and corporate nature as well. If you are the type of person who enjoys political jokes or (civil) disagreement, or has strong opinions about current national and world events you’d probably enjoy this book.
Each listing follows the same format: the word or phrase is bolded, followed by the part of speech it is (noun, verb, adverb, etc.) and a definition. Some definitions are just a couple of words long; others are a couple of paragraphs. I would say that this is a book that is best read in snippets – a few definitions here, a few there, with time in between to digest them.
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From the author, John Nassivera:
John Nassivera is a New Yorker who now lives in Vermont. His plays have been performed in New York and across the United States. In 2009 he received the Vermont Arts Council’s Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award.
THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY for an ungodly age
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