"A fresh and democratic take on language by a gifted teacher." -Mary Norris "[Jovin] never hectors, never finger-points; she enlightens and illuminates. This is lovely work." -Benjamin Dreyer 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 building and set up a folding table with a GRAMMAR TABLE sign, it took about thirty...

A riveting, one-of-a-kind anthology of the diversity, strangeness, and power of American English that features a tremendous array of letters, poems, memoir, jeremiads, stories, songs, documents, and more from Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln to Henry Roth and Zora Neale Hurston, from George Carlin and James Baldwin to Richard Rodr�iguez and Amy Tan, from Tony Kushner and Toni Morrison to Louise Erdrich and Donald Trump. This volume is a kind...