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| The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary | 
| Author: Ambrose Bierce
Creators: David E. Schultz, S. T. Joshi
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.64
You Save: $7.31 (37%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 24648
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 440
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0820324019
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780820324012
ASIN: 0820324019
Publication Date: January 3, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Book Description
A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary offers some 1,600 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 willful 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 on every entry. It will be celebrated by wits and word lovers everywhere. First time in paperback.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
Attempting to do it justice July 10, 2008
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.
Bitter Bierce at his very best... December 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
A classic October 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Great Gift August 1, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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...
A Beautiful Mind April 25, 2006
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
If truth is beauty, and beauty truth, this is one good looking book. As an aspiring cynic, finding this book was akin to Ahab finding the whale. (I have no idea what that means). I don't think this book could be written today. Most of Bierce's definitions have become accepted fact. The book belongs in the library of everyone who believes Political Correctness is the beginning of the end of the world. Without the ability to communicate honestly, we are doomed. If you don't agree, you're just a bigoted fool. (see Bierce definitions). A great, funny, lucid book.
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