Doubleday, $40; 560 pp. THE history of England is a history of conquest: Romans conquered its original Celtic inhabitants, the Britons, who were later also conquered by Germanic invaders from three ...

WHETHER mental qualities can be associated with racial characters is a question to which both anthropologists and psychologists have recently devoted considerable attention, but with no marked result.

THE RISE OF ENGLISH Global Politics and the Power of Language By Rosemary Salomone “Every time the question of language surfaces,” the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote, “in one way or ...

Mr. Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring professor at Amherst College and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The People’s Tongue: Americans and the ...

It wouldn't be spooky season without ghosts. The otherworldly white apparitions are a standby of Halloween celebrations. But they weren't always the stereotypical evil spirits we see in books and ...

The English language is a joy to behold, but a beast to learn. In addition to its numerous irregularities, there’s a plethora of phrases and idioms that seem to make no sense to non-native speakers.