The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary | Ambrose Bierce

The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary | Ambrose Bierce | A classic

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The Unabridged Dev...

	The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce University of Georgia Press, 2002 - 440 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, this dictionary offers 1600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Ambrose Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our failings and excesses to shine forth. This is the most extensively annotated edition of a work by Bierce ever published, and the first edition of "The Devil's Dictionary" to provide detailed bibliographical information for every entry.

Great Gift

This is a great book. The sarcasm and the definitions are the best. If you know someone who is a book lover or just enjoys quick wit-this book is for them. I bought two more just for gifts. It's one of those books that you can always pick up and find a smile...

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A classic

Still haven't found any real competitor for the Devils Dictionary.

Sheer honesty abounds. The insurance agent that came by my place rapidly deflated when I showed him the entry for "insurance" while (to his credit) acknowledged its veracity...

"an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table."

(followed by a vicious, fictitious and brilliant dialogue between an agent and perspective mark wherein said agent tries to overcome the mark's observation that by the agent's own actuarial tables a home owner without insurance would most likely save the full value of the house in premiums well before any loss... )

And that's just one of hundreds of essays. One of my intellectual heroes.

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Bitter Bierce at his very best...

Also known as "The Cynic's Workbook" this collection is classic and belongs in any library. Ambrose Bierce, like Mark Twain and few other of his contempories, had a biting wit that always left a mark.
Here is just a taste of his humor.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Good good stuff.

Attempting to do it justice

If poetry and sarcasm had a wild affair, and the more feminine of the two (poetry, I suppose) had a love child nine months later, it would take form in this book. Bitter Bierce defines everything from Saints ("a dead sinner revised and edited") to Egotists("a person of low taste, more interested in himself than me") with a snarl of disgust, appreciating only the flaws in our pitiful species.
*(this is where the disclaimer should go) Not recommended for anyone of the Judeo-Christian religion, Politicians, or anyone with an ounce of optimism left in their lives.

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The Devil's Dictionary

The basic version, by Ambrose Bierce, is a classic. The annotated version expands on both the content and the usefulness of the volume. A copy should be on everyone's bookshelf.

reviews: page 1, 2

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