And You Thought You Knew About the "and" Symbol!

Quirky lexiconographer and language fanatic Craig Conley pays homage to the oft-forgotten and overlooked symbol of the word "and", the lowly ampersand, in his entertaining and fascinating book Ampersand.

Filled with quotes, hilarious illustrations, historical tidbits, poetic usage and literary theory, Ampersand fills a gap in a true bibliophile's library--you know, the hole where utterly original, unusual and arguably trivial books are supposed to go.

About the sinuous ampersand, did you know that?:

*    Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott's epic poem "Omeros" features an ampersand-shaped rectal thermometer in Hell

*    The ampersand is the "single feature most useful to examine first when looking for writers' handwriting idiosyncrasies, or when comparing two examples of writing to check whether they are in the same hand" (Peter Beal, A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology)

*    In his poem "Meditation Celestial & Terrestrial", Wallace Stevens links heaven and earth with an ampersand

*    The ampersand was the first ligature to win the game of Twister

*    In olden times, children learning to write their alphabets would always end with the ampersand

Funny, absorbing and informative, Ampersand is a 93-page book that belongs on the shelf of everyone who loves etymology and curious tomes. And it's a safe bet that Ampersand would be a great gift for book lovers, too, since it's the only book (that I'm aware of) that is devoted entirely to &.

All hail the ampersand!

—Janet Boyer, author of The Back in Time Tarot Book