An A-Z of Modern America

An A-Z of Modern America is a comprehensive cultural dictionary which defines contemporary America through its history and civilization. The book includes.
Table of contents

A-Z of Modern America with its dimensions of x mm is easy to transport, and more importantly it is easy to read. The entries in this new dictionary are on important people; legal, religious and governmental practices; and terms from American life, customs e. Duchak has selected information on minorities, civil rights, and multiculturalism. She can also be applauded for choosing to include some entries from the field of history indispensable to understanding America today, reaching as far back as the Colonial Period. In addition, this work is loaded with terms from pop culture, ranging from big hair to drive through to songs such as "Auld Lang Syne " or Old MacDonald ".

Nevertheless, formal words specific to certain fields such as law e.


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Thus, it can be easily said that there is something for everyone in this handy, single-volume reference work. Apart from the over 3, definitions, this dictionary contains a list of abbreviations, nickname abbreviations, a sample page, appendixes, and indexes. Because all definitions are listed under the full names in alphabetical order, the register of nickname abbreviations assists the user in quickly finding the appropriate entry.

Another user-friendly aspect of A-Z of Modern America is the sample page, a guide on the use of the dictionary. Duchak has created her own categorization system in which cross-referenced related entries are shown in small caps, while information in parentheses indicate the area or field e.

Because most of the entries are nouns, the omission of information on the "parts of speech" and usage does not detract from the overall impression. The bulk of A-Z of Modern America is dedicated to concise but lucid definitions. In general, I have no major quibbles with the words selected for the volume, but at the same time I feel that the work advertised as a "comprehensive cultural dictionary" should have covered the area of technology e. I'm tempted to start up a locksmithing business that supplies key keys.

Once you start calling so many things key, of course, semantic inflation dissolves its sense almost entirely. The critic Robert Potts reports this parodic-sounding but deathly real example: To leverage, in such examples, usually means nothing more than "to use" or "exploit". The appropriation of this financial metaphor doesn't quite seem to have been thought through. The verb "leverage" began to be used in the late s specifically for a technique of speculating with borrowed money.

So executives who dream of leveraging synergies seem to be unconsciously conveying the message that they are taking a huge gamble that might result in disaster. It's also, frankly, a bit foolish-sounding.

Modern American History

Give me a place to stand and I will move the world, said Archimedes. He didn't say he would leverage the "deliverables matrix". The matrix is everywhere you look in the modern office. You can have an accountability matrix AKA a responsibility assignment matrix , a functional matrix, a project matrix and so on ad nauseam. Of course, there is even a sub-species of management called — you guessed it — matrix management. Are all these matrices separate universes of virtual reality in which workers are drugged and asleep in a post-apocalyptic world, with a virtual reconstruction of human civilisation beamed directly into their brains so the evil masters of each matrix can use their bodies as batteries?

The truth is not so interesting. What is the matrix? Basically, it's a spreadsheet. The phrase "a no-brainer" originated in sport, to describe a physical action in football or tennis that was so well-drilled it required no conscious thought. Its subsequent office adoption to mean "obviously a good idea", however, is both inverted boast and threat. It is thus an announcement and a recommendation for perfect zombie-like stupidity.

I thought we were human beings in the same room communicating with each other by making noises with our faces! I didn't realise we were online.

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And if we just go down the corridor to the coffee machine and talk in pairs, we'll suddenly be offline? The machines didn't really think this through, did they, if that's all you have to do to escape from your prison of virtual reality? There, a paradigm is a whole way of understanding the world, and a paradigm shift is a dramatic transfiguration in that understanding. Paradigm shifts are hugely important intellectual developments such as "the Copernican, Newtonian, chemical and Einsteinian revolutions".

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Sadly, owing to the widespread phenomenon of linguistic deflation, it has since become possible to call a much less world-shattering change a paradigm shift. Now, the author claims, "a discontinuous paradigm shift in management is happening. Instead, firms are going to pretend that they are not completely self-interested and really care about their customers.


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The ubiquitous business use of quality has become a kind of totem. But the insertion of quality into a business slogan or mission statement is also sometimes camouflage for less sunny intentions. Rather than delivering TV and radio programmes first?

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Or perhaps they meant delivering quality first and garbage later? Delivering Quality First actually meant sacking 2, workers. Whatever was wrong with those? To be fair, revert could mean "to return to a person" in medieval times, so it's not a wholly novel usage. Perhaps it is the echo of "pervert". I do recommend that if anyone ever promises to revert back to you, you should shout as loudly as you can that this means "get back back", and then start doing a bad chimp dance with optional hooting noises. When faced with the choice between calling a spade a spade or using a cloying euphemism, you know which the bosses will choose.

Happily, sunsetting also sounds less smelly than the venerable old mothballing. The more serious problem with thought-showering is that it is rarely effective. Unless thought showers are carefully planned and directed, they tend to encourage group conformity and repress individual creativity. That rather puts the dampeners on things, doesn't it?

Have you been upskilled lately? To say that you will upskill a person seems to figure the subject as a kind of upgradeable cyborg assistant, into which new programs may, at any time, be uploaded so as to improve its contribution to profit. We are thus invited to imagine a glorious ascent of a virtual ladder of "competencies", the better to forget that upskilling usually means demanding more work for the same pay.

Oh, right, the verticals. I'm totally on board with that. Oh, we need to talk about "content strategy in a difficult vertical"? According to Forbes, a vertical is: If you make project-management software for the manufacturing industry as opposed to the retail industry , you might say: In business, there is a distinction between horizontal and vertical organisation.

Apple, for example, is sometimes thought of as a vertical company because it makes "the whole widget" — both hardware and software. Vertical integration can also be a matter of owning the factories that supply your components, and so forth. In consulting lingo, meanwhile, a vertical can just be a new industry that you want to move into, by setting up a separate business unit.

Office types who use workshop as a verb probably imagine doing tough things with hammers and saws and vices in a sawdust-strewn shed, so picturing the frustrating immateriality of most modern work as something nostalgically physical and mechanical. But to workshop as a verb is actually a theatrical usage that dates from the s; according to the OED, it means: The first approach assumes that people hate working and crave security, and have to be forced with threats of punishment to do what you want.

The second approach assumes that people like to make an effort, are better motivated by rewards and are naturally creative. But it is also, of course, a boon to compilers of lexicons who otherwise wouldn't have anything to put under X, so you won't hear me complaining any further about it. The word probably appeals to management types for two reasons.

The first and more obvious is that yield is also a noun in finance meaning the expected income from a bond or other holding.