Holy Sh*t
A Brief History of Swearing
Melissa Mohr
Reviews and Awards
"Studying swearing is a way of studying human nature itself ... Holy Sh*t, Melissa Mohr's book on the history of profanity ... would all be good places to start." - The Economist
"Blending scholarly insight and ribald esprit, Holy Sh*t is a treasure trove of curious that will delight the logophile and the deviant alike." - Houman Barekat, Times Literary Supplement
"... an excellent book about history of language." - William Leith, Evening Standard
"... informative, often entertaining book" - Susan Elkin, Independent i
"I want to quote all of this to you, that's how much fun this history of swearing is" - Alison Flood, Bookseller
"Insightful, accessible and witty." - The Lady
"Throughout time, as words have left FCC-monitor territory and entered everyday conversation, we've kept coming up with new ways to express our greatest, angriest, most enthusiastic exclamations. And that process is pretty fucking cool." - Atlantic Monthly
"Intelligent and enjoyable... Ms. Mohr leads us on an often ear-boggling tour of verbal depravity, through the medieval and early-modern periods (via a fascinating analysis of scatological phrasing in early Bible translations) to the Victorian era and then our own time." - Wall Street Journal
"...one of the most absorbing and entertaining books on language I have encountered in a long time" - Washington Post
"As someone who relies on various forms of obscenity, vulgarity and profanity for roughly 75% of my written and verbal communication, I found this book fascinating and illuminating. Melissa Mohr's scholarship is rigorous, her prose trenchant and delightful; right from page one, Holy Sh*t is a motherf*cker. We are what we swear by and about, and this slim volume represents a significant and deeply enjoyable contribution to our understanding of ourselves." - Adam Mansbach, #1 New York Times bestselling author of GO THE F*CK TO SLEEP
"[Mohr's] approach positively twinkles with pleasure and amusement… This is a cracking f****** book, and innominables to anyone who says otherwise." - Sam Leith, The Guardian
"In Holy Sh*t, Melissa Mohr makes curses, oaths, profanities, and swear words the occasion for an entertaining and far-ranging historical journey, from the disputes over religious oaths in the Tudor period to the labored delicacies of the Victorians to our modern debates about expletives in the media and our new-found reticence about racial and religious slurs. One-stop shopping for anyone interested in the nether reaches of the English vocabulary." - Geoff Nunberg, University of California at Berkeley, Language Commentator on NPR's Fresh Air
"Profanity - the language that offends us-tells a great deal about who we are and how we got that way. Melissa Mohr's Holy Sh*t is a fascinating investigation, both provocative and immensely informative. I found it compulsively readable." - Stephen Orgel, author of Imagining Shakespeare
"Digressions on the art of equivocation and the etymology of some of the most infamous curses are highlights of the book, but those looking for a Devil's Dictionary of bad language should look elsewhere-this is some serious sh*t." - Publishers Weekly
"Informed, enlightening and often delightfully surprising." - Kirkus Reviews
