Put Downs: A Collection of Acid Wit

by Laura Ward, Robert Allen

These are the corrosive lines that were meant to cause offence, to squash the subject like a bug under foot. The words come from a wide variety of sources: historical quotes begin with the Romans; political ripostes date from the 19th century and sock it to the present power elite; musical insults include examples from Beethoven to the Beatles. And there’s nastiness for science, TV, and theater; national put-downs; even self-inflicted wounds. Among the zingers:

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”—Truman Capote, about Jack Kerouac.

“He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”—Lyndon B. Johnson on Gerald Ford.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2004

Reviews

[Jonathon · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only issue with this book is that they have some text that's magenta, and some page backgrounds that are pink, and some genius thought it'd be a good idea to put the 2 together making it kind of hard to read them. Other than that, it's a nice little collection.

[Jo Blackburn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't find anything clever or amusing in this book, alot of extracts of quotes which just didn't make any sense to me.Maybe I'm just hard to please, or maybe I expect too much from a put down, or maybe I'm just not very nice?

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of dazzling insults, comebacks, and put-downs.

[Frank Taranto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some reaal y good put downs, but a lot of just so-so stuff too.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one had some good bits, but was surprisingly too anglo as in English even for me and I'm an anglophile.