A guide to references commonly used in speech and writing. Explains more than 900 allusions. Entries include examples from today’s leading media. A must for serious readers, language lovers, and ESL students.

Elizabeth Webber is a native of Ottumwa, Iowa, transplanted to Washington, D.C. A lawyer by training but not inclination, she worked several years in Congress, but managed to make a clean getaway.
She is now a freelance writer and editor and devotes her time to the basics : reading, writing, and rowing on the Potomac River.
Mike Feinsilber, a Pennsylvanian, has been putting words in print ever since the 5th grade when he established The Daily Stink, which partially lived up to its name although it did not come out every day.
Feinsilber, assistant chief of bureau for news with The Associated Press in Washington, has been a newsman for more than 40 years, first in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Harrisburg, Newark, New York, Saigon, and washington for United Press International and since 1980 in Washington for the AP.
He is married, bicycles, gardens and bakes bread.