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Ben Yagoda

Biography

Ben Yagoda

Ben Yagoda is the author, coauthor or editor of 14 books, most recently GOBSMACKED!: The British Invasion of American English and O. HENRY: 101 Stories. He has written about language, writing and many other topics for the New Yorker, New York Times Book Review and Magazine, Slate, The American Scholar, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and publications that start with every letter of the alphabet except X and Z.

Yagoda has been awarded Guggenheim and MacDowell Fellowships to support his writing about O. Henry. His podcast, “The Lives They’re Living,” focuses on people whose achievements deserve renewed attention. Episodes have included Gene Seymour on Ishmael Reed, Michael Tisserand on Jules Feiffer, Carrie Courogen on Elaine May, and Dwight Garner on Calvin Trillin. Yagoda lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. ALIAS O. HENRY is his first novel.

Ben Yagoda

Books by Ben Yagoda

by Ben Yagoda - Fiction, Historical Fiction

O. Henry, born William Sidney Porter, arrived in New York City fresh from the Ohio Penitentiary, where he had served three-and-a-half years for embezzlement. The American magazine had just reached its pinnacle as an enterprise, and the short story was the most popular medium in entertainment. Porter was in the city to write. From his cell, he already had sold a number of stories to big magazines, and within five years of arriving in Manhattan, he would become the most successful fiction writer in the country. But he never --- never --- said anything about his prison experience, or, indeed, anything about his past life. Anything true, that is. In life as well as on the page, Porter was a yarn-spinner of the highest order. In this twisting tale, Ben Yagoda uses the novelist’s art to get at the truth that lay behind Porter’s reticence, and in doing so, he presents an iridescent portrait of New York at the time.

by Ben Yagoda - Linguistics, Nonfiction, Reference

The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America --- from French fries to Awesome, man! --- are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the 21st century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, GOBSMACKED! is a witty, entertaining and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases --- such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy and cheeky --- have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.