Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary
About the book
Author: Stefan Fatsis
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)
My review
When an ARC of this book first landed on my doorstep courtesy of Grove Atlantic, I posted a photo of it to my Instagram story with the caption “how to kidnap me.” I could read about our changing language all day long. Which is probably why my expectations were a little skewed here — but in a way that left me pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed. I had overindexed on my expectation about how much of this book would be about language itself and underindexed on how much this was going to be about what it’s like for a dictionary to keep up with it. That second thing is way more unique and interesting!
Stefan Fatsis, having been fascinated by dictionaries his whole life, installed himself at Merriam-Webster. In the book, he briefly takes us through the company’s history and then focuses on what it’s been like for the dictionary over the past ten years or so, as dictionaries have gone from sales teams selling household editions to search engine optimization battles to get their (free) content in front millions of eyeballs. As the internet enabled words to pop up, shift, and change faster than their predecessors ever could have imagined. As the 2016 election, COVID-19 pandemic, and 2024 election made the internet an even more fraught place to be.
While this was also a bit more about Fatsis himself than I expected, I still had a great time listening to the audiobook and I found all the information fascinating. If you’re a fan of books about language, definitely add this to your TBR!
Content and trigger warnings
Racial slurs (discussed, not used)
