Crazy English: The Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Language

A journalist, teacher at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and public-radio commentator, Lederer ( Anguished English ; Get Thee to a Punnery ) again adroitly mixes instruction with hilarity by showing that English, though the richest and most widely used of all the world's languages, is ``crazy.'' The text is a dazzling collection of anagrams, alliterations, idioms, illogical spelling rules (bough, ghost, honor, rhyme) and larky oxymora (Chaucer's classic ``hateful good,'' today's ``military intelligence,'' ``postal service'') . Verses, quizzes and anecdotes accompany Lederer's essays on ``the antics of semantics,'' greatly expanding the pleasure of what he correctly claims is ``the ultimate joy ride through our language.'' Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternates; author tour. (Sept.)