Product Description

"Talk to the hand, 'coz the face ain't listening!" This expression has become so widespread that Lynne Truss need not even mention the name of the TV talk show where you first heard it. It's a perfect example of how boorish behavior has become a point of pride in society today. "Talk to the hand"— when did the world stop wanting to hear? When did society stop valuing basic courtesy and respect? In the spirit of her runaway hit, #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynne Truss analyzes the apparent collapse of manners in our daily lives, and tells us what we can do about it.

Why are our dealings with strangers becoming more unpleasant day by day? When did "please" and "thank you" become passé? When did the words "hello," "good-bye," and "good morning" fall out of common usage? Why do people behave as if public spaces are their own chip-strewn living rooms? Talk to the Hand is a rallying cry for a return to civility in our "eff off" society and a colorful call to arms— from the wittiest defender of the civilized world. BACKCOVER: The Queen of Sticklers takes on the sorry state of modern manners.

"Without knocking anyone down on your way, hurry to the bookstore for a copy of Talk to the Hand… Long live the Queen of Zero Tolerance. And heaven help the rest of us."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Yes, people are now ruder than ever, and no, there's no excuse for it: The outraged and slighted can find solace in Talk to the Hand."
—New York Post

"Lynne Truss is "the Doyenne of Do's and Don'ts."
—Newsday

"The hilarious British fusspot is back with Talk to the Hand… in which she trains her zero tolerance wit on rude behavior, from the death of thank-you notes to the ubiquity of the F- word."
—Glamour

"She's cranky, she's articulate, and she's absolutely right. Just as she fomented a revolution in language, now she foments a revolution in behavior. You'll find yourself nodding in agreement; then you'll find yourself speaking up."
—Victoria Skurnick, Editor-in-Chief, Book-of-the-Month Club

"She can make 201 pages fly by as you snicker and chuckle, recognizing your own modern world in every paragraph. [...] Reading Talk to the Hand, you can enjoy a good laugh to offset the daily rudeness."
—The Kentucky Herald-Leader

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #318979 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-26
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

From the Back Cover
The Queen of Sticklers takes on the sorry state of modern manners.

"Without knocking anyone down on your way, hurry to the bookstore for a copy of Talk to the Hand… Long live the Queen of Zero Tolerance. And heaven help the rest of us."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Yes, people are now ruder than ever, and no, there's no excuse for it: The outraged and slighted can find solace in Talk to the Hand."
—New York Post

"Lynne Truss is "the Doyenne of Do's and Don'ts."
—Newsday

"The hilarious British fusspot is back with Talk to the Hand… in which she trains her zero tolerance wit on rude behavior, from the death of thank-you notes to the ubiquity of the F- word."
—Glamour

"She's cranky, she's articulate, and she's absolutely right. Just as she fomented a revolution in language, now she foments a revolution in behavior. You'll find yourself nodding in agreement; then you'll find yourself speaking up."
—Victoria Skurnick, Editor-in-Chief, Book-of-the-Month Club

"She can make 201 pages fly by as you snicker and chuckle, recognizing your own modern world in every paragraph. [...] Reading Talk to the Hand, you can enjoy a good laugh to offset the daily rudeness."
—The Kentucky Herald-Leader

About the Author
Lynne Truss is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Approach to Punctuation, The Lynne Truss Treasury, and Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door (Gotham, November 2005). Eats, Shoots & Leaves, for which she won Britain's Book of the Year Award, has sold more than three million copies worldwide. Truss is a regular host on BBC Radio 4, a Times (London) columnist, and the author of numerous radio comedy dramas.

Customer Reviews

Extremely boring
"Talk to the Hand" is an extremely boring book. Truss's other book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" had very dry humor, but I enjoyed it more because I'm a grammar nerd. To me, it seems that this book was the publisher's reaction to the popularity of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" and that they were merely trying to make a quick buck.

Brandon Simpson

Truss Comes Back Fighting the Extinction of Etiquette
Embittered albeit bemused finger-wagging appears to be author Lynne Truss' specialty, and I have to say I find her newest little tome on the global lack of respect and good manners even more cutting than her bad grammar colonic, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Both books reflect her British sense of civility with lacerating wit and shrewd observation, but this one feels more like a rant than a how-to manual on how to improve upon such social breeches. However, she does a clear-eyed job in analyzing the origins of such barbaric behavior.

In her previous book, Truss saw the decline of punctuation as indicative of the increasing spread of illiteracy. Here she suggests that the collapse of manners is the tip of what she calls a "social immorality iceberg", i.e., a decreasing competency in building community and using manners as a sign of mutual respect. In fact, there will definitely many who view her definition of what used to be considered basic good manners as elitist. For example, she may be a member of a shrinking populace who bristle when there is the absence of a simple "Thank you," and "You're welcome" when a door is held open. I happen to be in her camp, so I am quite amenable to her observations. Inevitably, there will be the impolite thinkers who demand quantitative data to back up her arguments. However, because so little data is available on long-term trends, Truss doesn't bother with statistics, and instead devotes six short chapters to examples of how behavior that was unthinkable a generation ago has become normal.

The weakness of the book is that she offers no actionable solutions. Her examples are entertaining but beyond hoping that someone will recognize the problem, she doesn't anticipate that things will improve. In fact, it seems like a missed opportunity to lay out a plan for how people really ought to behave in social situations with tangible steps for her readers (or more appropriately, the rude friends of her readers) to follow. Her reason for this omission is that she doesn't want to be held up to such constant scrutiny which seems like an unnecessary concession. Yet, Truss's concern for the morality of our everyday interactions is thorough and affecting, and to her credit, she never tries to simplify the subject given its political and moral dimensions. She celebrates intolerance and does attempt to set out a manifesto toward the end of the book. Just like the basis of the rising Labor movement in her homeland, Truss believes that manners are connected to the common good, and I have to agree that acts of kindness ennoble the world in which we live.

Anti Social.
Society has become so generally rude, uneducated and annoying that we have to hand-pick some few people and stay in. Fun book, a reflection of our times.