Garner's Modern American Usage

Garner's Modern American Usage, edited by Bryan Garner, is a usage guide for contemporary American English. It covers issues of usage, pronunciation, and style, from distinctions among commonly confused words and phrases and notes on how to prevent verbosity and obscurity. In addition, it contains essays about the English language.

Editions

The first edition was published in 1998 as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. In 2003 the second edition was published under the current title with a third more content than its predecessor. A third edition was published in August 2009. Oxford University Press has also published an abridged, paperback edition of Modern American Usage as The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style (2000).

Reception

Novelist David Foster Wallace said, "The fact of the matter is that Garner's dictionary is extremely good .... Its format ... includes entries on individual words and phrases and expostulative small-cap mini-essays." (An unabridged, much lengthier version of Wallace's essay, "Authority and American Usage", appeared in a 2006 anthology of essays entitled Consider the Lobster.) Garrison Keillor has called Garner's Modern American Usage one of the five most influential books in his library. Other critics, including John Simon, William Safire, Bill Walsh, and Barbara Wallraff, have praised the book's clear, simple, and nuanced guidance.

Jennifer Garner

Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an American actress and film producer. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Garner began her acting career by starring in theatre productions and television shows before making her feature film debut in the comedy Dude, Where's My Car (2000). Following a supporting role in Pearl Harbor, Garner gained recognition for her performance as CIA officer Sydney Bristow in the ABC spy-action thriller drama series Alias, which aired for five seasons from 2001 to 2006. For her work on the series, Garner won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Television Series Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

While working on Alias, Garner gained a cameo role in Catch Me if You Can (2002), followed by a praised leading performance in the romantic comedy drama 13 Going on 30 (2004). Garner has appeared in supporting as well as lead roles in the 2000s including the superhero film Daredevil (2003), the romantic comedy fantasy film 13 Going on 30 (2004), the superhero film Elektra (2005), the comedy-drama Juno (2007), and the fantasy romantic comedy film The Invention of Lying (2009). In the 2010s, she appeared in the fantasy comedy-drama film The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012), the biographical drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013), and the family comedy film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2015).

Bernie Sanders

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Vermont. He is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A Democrat as of 2015, Sanders had been the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, though his caucusing with the Democrats entitled him to committee assignments and at times gave Democrats a majority. Sanders has been the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee since January 2015, and previously served for two years as chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Sanders was born and raised in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, he was an active civil rights protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After settling in Vermont in 1968, Sanders ran unsuccessful third-party campaigns for governor and U.S. senator in the early to mid-1970s. As an independent, he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont's most populous city, in 1981, and was reelected three times. In 1990, he was elected to represent Vermont's at-large congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1991, Sanders co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He served as a congressman for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2012, he was reelected with 71% of the popular vote. During the 2016 presidential primaries, Sanders became the first self-described democratic socialist and first Jewish American to win a presidential primary of a major party, namely the New Hampshire primary.

James Garner

James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928 – July 19, 2014) was an American actor, voice artist, singer, producer, and comedian. He starred in several television series over more than five decades, including such popular roles as Bret Maverick in the 1950s western comedy series Maverick and Jim Rockford in the 1970s detective comedic drama series The Rockford Files, and played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen, Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Blake Edwards' Victor Victoria (1982), Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Space Cowboys (2000) with Clint Eastwood, and The Notebook (2004).

Early life

James Scott Bumgarner was born on April 7, 1928 in Norman, Oklahoma. He was the youngest of three sons of Weldon Warren Bumgarner and Mildred Scott (Meek). His brothers were actor Jack Garner (1926–2011) and Charles Bumgarner, a school administrator who died in 1984. His family was Methodist. His mother died when he was five years old. After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.

Jay Leno

James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno (/ˈlɛnoʊ/; born April 28, 1950) is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor, and television host. He was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2009. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ET, also on NBC.

After The Jay Leno Show was canceled in January 2010 amid a host controversy, Leno returned to host The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 1, 2010. He hosted his last episode of The Tonight Show on February 6, 2014. That year, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

Early life

Leno was born in New Rochelle, New York. His homemaker mother, Catherine (née Muir; 1911–1993), was born in Greenock, Scotland, and came to the United States at age 11. His father, Angelo (1910–1994), was an insurance salesman who was born in New York, to immigrants from Flumeri, Italy. Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, and obtained a bachelor's degree in speech therapy from Emerson College, where he started a comedy club in 1973. His older brother, Patrick (May 12, 1940 – October 6, 2002), was a Vietnam War veteran who worked as an attorney.