Words for Breakfast

Whether it lands softly or plops on your doorstep with a thick, dull thud, the daily newspaper -- both in its headlines and the stories themselves -- is your daily dose of the English language like you've never seen it anywhere else on the planet.Slid quietly through your mail-slot or into the snarling jaws of the family dog, the newspapers you read present a newspeak all their own, a crazy variation of the English language that has been poked, prodded and turned inside out for your daily and everlasting wonderment and joy.

Tucked neatly into your mailbox or hurled with incredible accuracy into that prickly bush on your front lawn, your daily is heady with idiosyncrasies, non-sequiturs, phrases and expressions -- all wildly contorted, under deadline, into a language you maybe thought you knew -- until now.

With examples and illustrations pulled from more than 500 North American and international newspapers, Jay Myers invites the reader to explore the words we have for breakfast - the world of sports jargon, business-speak, psycho-babble, political obfuscation, military metaphor, and techno-talk that greet us each day in this engaging, informative, and endlessly entertaining book.