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Stefan Fatsis

Biography

Stefan Fatsis

Stefan Fatsis is the author of the New York Times bestseller WORD FREAK, about the world of competitive Scrabble; A FEW SECONDS OF PANIC, about life in the National Football League; and WILD AND OUTSIDE, about minor league baseball. His latest book is UNABRIDGED: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary. In four decades as a journalist, Fatsis has written and talked for SlateThe Wall Street Journal, NPR, The New York TimesSports Illustrated and many other outlets. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Stefan Fatsis

Books by Stefan Fatsis

by Stefan Fatsis - Cultural Studies, Linguistics, Nonfiction

Words are the currency of culture --- and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America’s most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean, and how we write and think about them. As he recounts in UNABRIDGED, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere “one of the most basic features of our collective humanity.”