Weeds in the garden of words : further observations on the tangled history of the English la... Book

Another look at the English language from numerous vantage-points: slang, euphemisms, word origins, use in advertising, and grammatical considerations.

One thing I struggled with in the early parts of the book is that it appears to be written for an Australian audience, addressing things that an Australian would be familiar with, but not necessarily an American. Nonetheless, at some level, English is English, and Burridge covers many aspects of our use (/misuse) of the language in many interesting ways.