Whether you have children or not Buy this book. If you have children read them the landscape poetry in here. They will sing them in their sleep. It will take them on magical journeys to happy places and you also.

I just started browsing through a book of his poems in spanish one day and loved them, but my spanish is marginal. This has the spanish poems side by side with english translations, many of which I don't really like because they do things like switch words and lines and take a little too much freedom and change the spirit of the poem, but that's okay. You can read the spanish, read the english, and see exactly what has been changed, but the beauty is in the spanish ones, and though his vocabulary is large, yours doesn't really have to be to appreciate the sound and sight of these poems in spanish. I love many of the sonnets, plus the king of harlem, which reminds me of HCE from Finnegans Wake, this character that becomes the landscape itself, "after walking", and many others from the poet in new york. I've just been getting into some spanish poets after reading some st john of the cross and seeing what types of flows and life can be infused into words in this language, and these dark, bloody grimy oozes of language have had me high for weeks.

Brilliant, emotions of positive and negative are tasted in this work

This is a great Hebrew lexicon with detailed entries with references to the other semitic languages such as Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopic. In fact, it even has a biblical Aramaic lexicon as an appendix.

This Oxford edition is much nicer than the Hendrickson one.

Why a lexicon? "In the beginning was the WORD." Word usage is enormously helpful to Biblical understanding. H.W.F. Gesenius (mid 1800's) is acclaimed as the Noah Webster of Old Testament Hebrew lexicons (dictionary). He brings to the Old Testament a wonderful blend of Christian/Jewish background and insight. Be sure to note not only the word you are looking up, but also the words that surround it, for they too often lend very interesting and even uncanny insight (divine providence).

The New Shorter Oxford is a major disappointment. The dust jacket copy says that it contains "virtually every word or phrase in use in English -- worldwide -- since 1700." Unfortunately, this is not true. Among the words I was not able to find in the NSO but was able to find in _abridged_ dictionaries (e.g., Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary (MWCD), American Heritage College Dictionary, Webster's New World College Dictionary) were: cilantro, Italian greyhound, photoresist, High Holy Days, sealpoint, compact (in its mathematical sense), supersymmetry and daikon, among many others. No doubt checking competing unabridged dictionaries will produce many more examples.
Some of the NSO's definitions are incorrect, e.g. that for Siamese cat, which is defined to have a brown head notwithstanding that only certain varieties of them (sealpoint and chocolate point) do; oddly enough, the 1993 revision of the same publisher's Concise Oxford Dictionary has a correct definition, as well as an entry for "sealpoint".
Unlike the full OED, NSO does not provide detailed dates for most entries, relying instead on, e.g., "L20" for late 20th Century. So it came as a surprise that even the MWCD was more useful for providing specific years (e.g., 1953 for "photoresist" and 1743 for "Italian greyhound").
Because it contains gaps and errors that become evident in even less than an hour's perusal, the NSO, despite containing a lot of words, cannot live up to its jacket's promise of being "the new authority on the English language." Any dictonary that lacks "cilantro" is not fit, in my view, even to claim authority as a referee for Scrabble.

The best of the large dictionaries. Although I'll concede that the NSOED does not live up to its dust jacket claim for including all words since 1700, it is far more comprehensive than any of its desk top competitors. By breaking it into two volumes, Oxford has made each book manageable and one doesn't need to lift weights to look up a word. The use of the OED's approach to etymology makes this dictionary superior to any in its price range, including, specifically, the Random House and the American Heritage. It dwarfs the Collegiate dictionaries (Webster's and the New World) for number of words included. Easy to read, easy to browse, endlesslly rewarding. Own this, the 2nd OED, and Webster's Unabridged and you've got everything you need.

despite the odd complaints of the 'websters' fetishist who reviewed this book in 1997, this dictionary is second only to the full oed. it suffers in comparison to its sire only from necessary abbreviations due to size.

i have not been disappointed with it so far, and suspect that scholars, except perhaps of modern animal husbandry and american vernacular, will not be disapointed either. this is an ideal reference for graduate students, and others who have need of a serious text at a reasonable price.

and anyone who claims not to know that 'cilantro' is merely a recent american name for the native european herb 'coriander' (p.511) is not fit, in my humble opinion, to act as a referee for this excellent book!

This dictionary maybe the second best one there is, second to the real thing, the multi-volume OED. The only problem I have with these are that the books themselves - there being only two - they are so bulky and heavy that you can't easily handle them without laying the book flat on a table. The content is great and plentiful, but the physical reality of using such large, heavy books is something to consider.

I ordered this 2-volume dictionary after purchasing, and subsequently returning, the latest edition of the Compact Oxford Dictionary. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary is very easy on the eyes and quite a good browsing dictionary. The micrographic Compact Oxford Dictionary is certainly more exhaustive but is a real pain in the gluteus maximus to use (e.g., the eyestrain it inflicts, even with the big magnifying glass, etc). Oxford Publishing made a big, big mistake in going from a two-volume set with four OED pages reproduced onto each page to a one-volume tome with nine OED pages reproduced onto each page when they published the second edition of the Compact Oxford Dictionary.

Anyhow, the Shorter Oxford is a happy compromise if you haven't the shelf space or the budget for the 20-volume OED. However, I somehow feel that a bit too much page space is wasted in this latest edition. I realize they allowed for a lot of space between entries, margin area, etc in order for the book to be more eye-friendly, but I'd rather they'd used more of the available space to include more of the contents of the OED.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent reference, and certainly better than any ordinary dictionary for home, school, or office.

(However, I must admit I'd someday like to own the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary(OED))

This two-volume dictionary is a perfect choice for most people. Single volume dictionaries, such as the American Heritage and New Oxford American English, pale in comparison.

There are no pictures and very few biographical entries. I find this a plus as it allows for more headwords.

The layout is very clean and easy on the eyes. Judicious spacing makes the bold headwords easy to find.

It should be noted that this edition replaces the fourth edition New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

The disclaimer at the front of the book explains it all:
"This book was set in 10/12 Century Schoolbook by the author and printed and bound by Malloy Lithographing."

No mention of an editor, and it's obvious from the very beginning. The text is heavy with bold, italic and underlines. I gave up marking the errors in Chapter 2 because I was spending more time marking than reading.

Getting any useful information out of this book is very difficult.

As a professional in the IT industry I did not find this book a helpful reference. Perhaps I did not carefully read the subtitle "...in plain English". So, this would be a good teaching tool, not a good reference book.

Although written "in plain English" it is verbose. I really would not want to be a student reading all of this for a class. There is much repetition (a good technique for oral instruction). And much emphasis is given using BOLD, Italics, and Underscore. Whew!

Finally, the list price is too high. I would borrow the book from a friend, but I would not purchase it on my own (especially if I were a student on limited income).