The Art of Verbal Warfare

If you want to know why you swear, what counts as a potty mouth in other cultures, and why words can hurt more than sticks and stones, then this rampage of a book is for you: it will amuse, embarrass, provoke, enlighten and annoy the hell out of you about all forms of dirty language and dirty politics. For it is also a passionate defence of the joys and failures Western democracy, liberalism and rationality for which using words well really matters.', Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek, University of Cambridge, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and Foreign Secretary of the British Academy