What a great book for 'wordy' people! Short, concise, and fun without being patronizing or (too) prescriptive. One of my favorite sidelights is a list of 10 proverbs for and against words: "Words have no boundaries." (Bulgarian) "A word spoken at the right moment is like a golden apple on a silver dish." (Silesian) "Words are good, but hens lay eggs." (German) It's kind of weird to agree with each of them, but I sort of do.
There is a good Anglo-Saxon word that has fallen into disuse: "wordhoard." Crystal defines this as "the collection of words [individuals] hold in their heads, which they could draw upon." The joy of this is that we are continually adding to it as we have more experiences; there is infinite space in our heads for all our words. That's amazing. Of course, we don't use ALL our words every day (or week); most of them are 'in storage' and pulled out only in special circumstances.
The last few chapters explain how to "become a word detective" and help out the linguists and lexicologists in building the wordhoard of the language as a whole. Included are loads of websites and societies to check out from regular dictionaries to place-name organizations.
This is NOT a grammar book, it's just a quick history of the English language and the study of it.
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