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The Penguin Dictionary of First Names
The Penguin Dictionary of First Names
Nov 26, 2024 10:43 PM

Author:David Pickering

The Penguin Dictionary of First Names

What's in a name? Rather more than you might at first suspect, for names are steeped in history and myth and have much to tell us about our past, our beliefs - even our personality traits. Now fully updated for its second edition, with 150 new entries, The Penguin Dictionary of First Names takes a close look at over 5,000 examples, ranging from the familiar to the comparatively obscure, drawn from all parts of the English-speaking world. Detailed and informative, it is essential reading for expectant parents and for anyone who is intrigued by the story attached to each name.

Reviews

a complex examination of faith and the search for meaning in the modern world... an often disconcerting but thoughtful and challenging pie ce of work.

—— The Sunday Times

'Man does for the reader that most difficult of tasks: he conjures up an ancient people in an alien landscape in such a way as to make them live . . . a gripping present day quest'

—— Guardian

'Attila is known as a savage but there was much more to this great warrior. Man takes his readers on a thrilling ride alongside the man who marauded across Europe, striking terror into the hearts of entire nations'

—— The Good Book Guide

'Racy and imaginative...sympathetically and readably puts flesh and bones on one of history's most turbulent characters'

—— Sunday Telegraph

'Man's excellent writing breathes new life into a character whose spirit lives on in China and Mongolia today'

—— Historical Novels Review

'Man is an excellent guide...well-versed in Mongolian, he has travelled extensively in the country while researching the more mysterious elements Genghis' life, and this experience shines through the book...he writes knowledgeably'

—— Literary Review

A top biography...This is great, grisly stuff and an education for anyone

—— Evening Standard

... This bright, engaging and breezy book ... suits the tenor of our times.

—— The Times

A remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event

—— New York Times Book Review

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in 'drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust'

—— New York Times

A quiet triumph, moving and simple - impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics

—— Washington Post

All too infrequently, a book comes along that' s as daring as it is acclaimed. Art Spiegelman's Maus is just such a book

—— Esquire

A remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution... at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book. Brilliant, just brilliant

—— Jules Feiffer

Maus is a masterpiece, and it's in the nature of such things to generate mysteries, and pose more questions than they answer. But if the notion of a canon means anything, Maus is there at the heart of it. Like all great stories, it tells us more about ourselves than we could ever suspect

—— Philip Pullman

Spiegelman's Maus changed comics forever. Comics now can be about anything

—— Alison Bechdel

Reading [his work] has been an amazing lesson in storytelling

—— Etgar Keret

It can be easy to forget how much of a game-changer Maus was.

—— Washington Post
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