Chambers

‘The history of language has never seen anything like this. Ellen’s mobile grammar travelogue, presented with an engaging humour and humility will appeal to anyone with an interest in the way English works – which means all of us. Reality television? This is reality grammar.’ -David Crystal, author of How Language Works

For fans of Gyles Brandreth, Susie Dent and Bill Bryson, an unconventional guide to the English language drawn from the cross-country adventures of an itinerant grammarian.

When Ellen Jovin first walked outside her Manhattan apartment and set up a folding table with a sign reading “The Grammar Table,” it took about 30 seconds to get her first visitor. Everyone had a question for her. The Grammar Table was such a hit – attracting the attention of The New York Times, NPR, and CBS Evening News – that Ellen soon hit the road, travelling across the U.S. to answer questions from students, retired editors, bickering couples, and anyone else who uses words in this world.

In Rebel with a Clause, Jovin shares the heartwarming and humorous stories of the people she meets, and what is most on their minds, grammatically speaking – from the Oxford comma to the places prepositions can go, the likely lifespan of ‘whom,’ semicolonphobia, and so much more.

Rebel with a Clause combines the qualities of a first-class work of reference with the laugh-out-loud pleasure of a good read. Punctuated with linguistic debates from tiny towns to crowded cities, this grammar romp will delight anyone wishing to polish their prose or revel in our age-old, universal fascination with language.

Found in Translation: The Unexpected Origins of Place Names unravels the tangled threads of history and etymology to uncover the strange, intriguing and enlightening stories that have shaped the names of countries and places around the world.

Starting in the world’s second largest country, Canada, whose name means ‘the village’, renowned travel writer, Duncan Madden takes us on a spellbinding tour through the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania, visiting the weird and wonderful along the way. Learn about the Land Protected by Fire , otherwise known as Azerbaijan; drop by Hippopotamus, or Mali; and sail to the Land of Frizzy-Haired Men in Papua New Guinea.

Found in Translation will entertain and inspire the culturally curious – armchair explorers and avid travellers, historians, linguists and lovers of language – painting a new perspective on the names, histories and origins of the places we live in and travel to. Visiting more than sixty countries across all six continents, Found in Translation includes the stories of Canada, USA, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Iceland, Ireland, UK, Germany, Russia, Italy, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Iraq, India, China, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and many more…

The foreword, written by bestselling author, explorer and photographer, Levison Wood, sets the context for this revelatory work that is part travelogue, history book and etymological reference.

A powerful new anthology depicting how love over the past two-and-a-half millennia has found its expression in the words of the world’s greatest poets.

No, Love Is Not Dead is a timely affirmation of the great linguistic diversity of poetry and its ability to express passionate love, the most extreme of human emotions. With influential, award-winning poets including Kim Hyesoon, Laura Tohe and Warsan Shire, and languages ranging from Amharic, Akkadian and Ancient Greek to Yankunytjatjara, Yiddish and Yoruba, this unique anthology engages the reader in reflective tales of unlikely love stories and impossible love, love in a time of politics, surrealist love, visual love and free love, offering an intuitive insight into both historical and present-day perceptions of love across cultures.

Including over 50 poets, writing on each of the world’s continents, this new anthology of poems about love features a diverse range of original poems written in a variety of languages – modern, ancient, endangered and constructed -, accompanied by English translations and commentaries.

Poets included in the book: Apollinaire; Nicole Brossard; Augusto de Campos; Catullus; Chaucer; Dante; Robert Desnos; Ali Cobby Eckermann; Goethe; Kim Hyesoon; Louise Labé; Federico Garcia Lorca; Vladimir Mayakovsky; Miklós Radnóti; Kutti Ravathi; Sappho; Warsan Shire; Laura Tohe; Marina Tsvetaeva.

Languages included in the book: Akkadian; Amharic; Ancient Greek; Faroese; French; Galician; German; Hungarian; Italian; Japanese; Latvian; Maori; Persian; Polari; Portuguese; Russian; Sanskrit; Scots; Scottish Gaelic; Serbian;  Spanish; Urdu; Welsh; Yoruba.

Foreword by Laura Tohe, the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and Professor Emeritus with Distinction at Arizona State University, who has won awards including the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship, the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award, and the Arizona Book Association’s Glyph Award for Best Poetry.

One language is falling silent every two weeks. Half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today will be lost by the end of this century. With the loss of these languages, we also lose the unique poetic traditions of their speakers and writers. 

Poems from the Edge of Extinction gathers together 50 poems in languages from around the world that have been identified as endangered; it is a celebration of our linguistic diversity and a reminder of our commonalities and the fundamental role verbal art plays in human life around the world. With poems by influential, award-winning poets such as US poet laureate Joy Harjo, Hawad, Valzhyna Mort, and Jackie Kay, this anthology offers a unique insight into both languages and poetry, taking the reader on an emotional, life-affirming journey into the culture of these beautiful languages.

Each poem appears in its original form, alongside an English translation, and is accompanied by a commentary about the language, the poet and the poem – in a vibrant celebration of life, diversity, language, and the enduring power of poetry.

This timely collection is passionately edited by widely published poet and UK National Poetry Librarian, Chris McCabe, who is also the founder of the Endangered Poetry Project, a major project launched by London’s Southbank Centre to collect poetry in the world’s disappearing languages, and introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme and the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS University of London, and Dr Martin Orwin, Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic, SOAS University of London.

Languages included in the book: Assyrian; Belarusian; Chimiini; Irish Gaelic; Maori; Navajo; Patua; Rotuman; Saami; Scottish Gaelic; Welsh; Yiddish; Zoque.

Poets included in the book: Joy Harjo; Hawad; Jackie Kay; Aurélia Lassaque; Nineb Lamassu; Gearóid Mac Lochlainn; Valzhyna Mort; Laura Tohe; Taniel Varoujan; Avrom Sutzkever.

The greatest survey of slang ever published – winner of the 2012 Dartmouth Medal. ‘The reference work of the vulgar tongue to which all others must now be referred […] English slang in more detail than any lexicographer before him’ The Telegraph

This three-volume set of Green’s Dictionary of Slang demonstrate the sheer scope of a lifetime of research by Jonathon Green, the leading slang lexicographer of our time. A remarkable collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language, it covers slang from the past five centuries right up to the present day, from all the different English-speaking countries and regions. Every word and phrase is authenticated by genuine and fully-referenced citations of its use, giving the work a level of authority and scholarship unmatched by any other publication in this field.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang is a groundbreaking work. Quite simply, it is the most authoritative and comprehensive record of slang ever to be made available.

• The magnum opus from the English-speaking world’s leading slang lexicographer, Jonathon Green
• Meticulously researched and thoroughly authenticated, with all words, phrases and meanings backed by citations from a myriad of original sources
• Covers 500 years of slang from right across the English-speaking world and from all walks of life
• Contains 10.3 million words, offering over 53,000 entries, covering 100,000 definitions of words and phrases, and including over 413,000 citations

Whether you want to unwind with a simple game like Accordion or Clock, or are looking for more of a challenge like Flower Garden or Miss Milligan, there is a game for everyone, regardless of age or level of skill.

Peter Arnold is an author and editor, most of whose 50 or so books concern sports and games. Several of his books are on table games, including some on individual card games, one of which was described by a New York author as ‘the best history of gambling’.

The essential one-stop factfinder.

14 Thematic Sections: Space – Earth – Climate and Environment – Natural History- Human Body, Health and Nutrition – Science and Technology- History – Arts and Culture – Thought and Belief – Sports and Games- Time – Communication – Social Structure – Nations of the World.

Covering everything from music to mythology and the human body to history, Chambers Facts, Facts, Facts is packed with a remarkable collection of information in a single quick-reference volume. All the essential facts and figures are clearly presented, together with extra features such as mini-biographies and glossaries. The full index and detailed contents listings make it easy to find specific information.

• Nearly 1,000 pages of facts and figures, fully updated for this new edition
• Clearly presented in an attractive colour layout
• With diagrams, tables, lists and maps

An engaging introduction to traditional knowledge and forgotten wisdom cooking with a range – counting sheep – curing drunkenness finding water – signalling with semaphore – identifying plants and trees making and taking tea – natural first aid – using an abacus navigating by nature – preparing antidotes to poisoning predicting the sex of a baby – repairing clothes curing warts – weather forecasting.

Lost Wisdom is a celebration of the time-honoured wisdom upon which we all once relied. It draws on folklore, tradition and superstition, and is packed with amusing anecdotes and historical extracts which illuminate the beliefs and knowledge of our ancestors. It brings to life the wisdom and practical skills that helped generation after generation, only becoming lost with the advent of mechanization and the technological age.

Following in the footsteps of Lost Crafts, Lost Wisdom is a beautiful book that will once more immerse you in the pleasures of the past.

Celebrating curiosity and adventure, The Odditorium explores the obsessions, achievements and failures of lesser-known but utterly remarkable individuals who exemplify the human spirit through their stories of invention, trickery, subversion and survival.

Throughout its pages you’ll learn about the antics and adventures of tricksters, eccentrics, deviants and inventors. While their stories range from heroic failures to great hoaxes, one thing unites them – they all carved their own path through life. Each protagonist exemplifies the human spirit through their dogged determination, willingness to take risks, their unflinching obsession and, often, a good dollop of eccentricity.

Learn about Reginald Bray (1879–1939), a Victorian accountant who sent over 30,000 singular objects through the mail, including himself; Cyril Hoskin (1910–1981), a Cornish plumber who reinvented himself as a Tibetan lama and went on to sell over a million books; and Elaine Morgan (1920–2013), a journalist who battled a tirade of prejudice to pursue an aquatic-based theory of human evolution, which is today being championed by David Attenborough.

Elsewhere, we uncover the lesser-known obsessions of such historical giants as Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726), whose beloved alchemy led to a lifetime’s search for the philosopher’s stone and elixir of life; and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), whose obsession with cross-eyed ladies led him to seek a ‘cure’ through the first recorded case of CBT.

While many of us are content to lead a conventional life, with all of its comfort and security, The Odditorium reminds us of the characters who felt compelled to carve their own path, despite risking ostracism, failure, ridicule and madness. While history wouldn’t be the same without the likes of Shakespeare, Caesar and Einstein, it is when curiosity and compulsion meet that conventions are challenged, culture is re-invigorated and we find new ways to understand ourselves and the world around us.

This beautifully-designed book, brought to you by the team behind the award-winning Ernest Journal, is a celebration of eccentricity, invention and obsession and is a must for curious and adventurous souls.

A collection of 50 of the most significant speeches from around the globe that demonstrably changed the modern world and analysis into the impact they had.

Throughout history, great speeches have produced great change. From inciting violence and asserting control to restoring peace and securing freedom, nothing has the raw emotional power of a speech delivered at the right moment, in the right place, with the right content, and the right delivery.

50 Speeches That Made The Modern World is a celebration of the most influential and thought-provoking speeches that have shaped the world we live in. With comprehensive, chronological coverage of speeches from the 20th and 21st centuries, taken from all corners of the globe, it covers Emmeline Pankhurst’s patiently reasoned condemnation of men’s failure to improve ordinary women’s lives in 1908 through speeches by Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion, Albert Einstein, Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Benazir Bhutto, Osama Bin Laden and Aung San Suu Kyi, right up to the most compelling oratory surrounding the 2016 US Presidential elections.

Through the rallying propaganda speeches during World War II to the cautious rhetoric of the Cold War period, through challenging the status quo on issues of race, gender and politics to public addresses to the masses on the issues of AIDS and terrorism, through apologies, complaints, warmongering, scaremongering and passionate pleas, this book delivers the most important speeches of the modern era and why they still remain so significant.

Speeches are printed in full and chronologically arranged in a smart, open design. Featuring photo headshots of the speakers, each speech has an introduction explaining the background behind every speech and biographical details of each of the speakers as well as analysis of each speech throughout including buzzwords, memorable phrases and marginal notes.