While sitting by the fire on a drizzly afternoon, I took a break from thinking my deep important thoughts to read The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics by John Pollack. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter? Watch a Video Skillfully weaving together stories and evidence from history, brain science, pop culture, literature, anthropology, and humor, The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. In The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack-a former World Pun Champion and presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton-explains why such wordplay is It both revolutionized language and played a pivotal role in making the modern world possible. But such attitudes are relatively recent developments. The pun is commonly dismissed as the lowest form of wit, and punsters are often unpopular for their obsessive wordplay. A former word pun champion's funny, erudite, and provocative exploration of puns, the people who make them, and this derided wordplay's remarkable impact on history.
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