If I were paranoid, I’d suspect Mignon Fogarty of reading my mail. In her simple, delightful new book—”Grammar Girl’s 101 Troublesome Words You’ll Master in No Time” (St. Martin’s Griffin)—she just ...

One such book is “Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words” (Crown, 2002). Bryson doesn’t suffer literary fools when it comes to the words we commonly misuse. He’s a purist, drawing careful, some ...

I confess. I read some nerdy books. One such book is “Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words” (Crown, 2002). Bryson doesn’t suffer literary fools when it comes to the words we commonly misuse. He’s ...

Host Tavis Smiley speaks with Randall Kennedy, professor at Harvard Law School, about his new book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Please be advised that this segment contains ...

clung tenaciously. Or hovered imperiously. It's just always there. Kennedy, the Rhodes scholar, Harvard Law School professor and author of 1997's "Race, Crime, and the Law," immersed himself in the ...

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy Pantheon 256 pages, $22 If Randall Kennedy could see me now—huddled over my keyboard, tense, worrying over a single word—he would ...