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anna_m_k's review
Ultimately, this is less of a history of slang and more a collection of slang words pulled from one of three source types. Décharné pulls from historical slang dictionaries, pulp fiction mystery and detective novels, and the music he likes to list out the slang words. He rarely goes into the words' histories or into the history of certain slang traditions. Instead, he mostly just lists them and defines them in loosely themed chapters.
ziggyhagfish's review
Interesting info presented badly. Dry as the sahara. Long strings of words presented without time for narrative or context. Would prefer to read a dictionary.
antij's review
2.0
I was expecting more of a history, but this was little more than a listing of slang terms organized loosely in categories.
lizziethereader's review
2.0
The best thing about this book is the cover. I guess I just expected way more linguistics from this book. Digressions into the music industry and the like are not what I was looking for when I picked up this book and I just wish the actual interesting explorations into slang were more numerous, detailed, and explanatory. Instead it seemed to be the author frequently drifted from the topic to show off how much he knows about certain things. Not what I came for!
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