"Noah Webster may be best remembered for the enormous and ambitious task of writing his famous dictionary, but for him, this accomplishment was a means to an end. His true goal was to streamline the language spoken in our newly formed country so that it could be used as a force to bring people together and be a source of national pride. Though people laughed at his ideas, Webster never doubted himself. In the end, his so-called foolish notions achieved...

"A picture book biography of Noah Webster"--

In The Dictionary Wars, Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language....

Tells how even as a noah was fascinated with words and was determined to learn as many as he could. Describes his life in colonial New England and how he attended Yale College.

Traces the life of the farm boy who became a teacher and went on to write the first American dictionary.

From the author of "The Man Who Made Lists" comes an absorbing biography of Noah Webster, whose name is synonymous with the dictionary he created, but whose life story is not nearly so ubiquitous.