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pp. 334, “The ‘treasure-house of the language,’ the Oxford English Dictionary, has inspired its own treasury of books, of which Brewer’s is just the latest. The 70-year process of creating the OED’s first edition, chronicled in Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (2003) and Lynda Mugglestone’s Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (2005), has passed into heroic dictionary legend. Brewer takes the history forward from the first edition’s completion in 1928 into less familiar territory – the making of the first (1933) and second (1972-86) supplements; OED2 (1989), which merged the supplements with the original; and several Additions containing new entries. The need for a thorough revision, long recognized, began in earnest in 1994. Ironically, despite the OED’s relatively early conversion to an electronic medium, completion of the long-awaited third edition may take as long as the first; it was originally planned for 2010 but has been deferred. Brewer’s account is not light reading, but intrepid dictionary lovers will eat it up.”