Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Verbal Advantage Complete Success Edition

Rate this book
24 Original CD's from the latest edition of Verbal Advantage, these are Authentic Original copies in NEW condition. They are in their original packaging.

156 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1, 2005

5 people are currently reading
27 people want to read

About the author

Charles Harrington Elster

44 books53 followers
Charles Harrington Elster is a writer, broadcaster, and logophile—a lover of words.

He is the author and narrator of the audio vocabulary-building program Verbal Advantage and the book by the same name. His other books include Tooth and Nail and Test of Time, vocabulary-building novels for high school students preparing to take the college entrance exams; There's a Word for It, a lighthearted look at unusual—and unusually useful—words; and The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, which William Safire of The New York Times hailed as "the best survey of the spoken field in years." In 2005 Harcourt published What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language, and in 2006 Houghton Mifflin released the second edition of The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, featuring nearly 200 new entries.

Charlie was pronunciation editor of the seventh and eighth editions of Black's Law Dictionary and a consultant for Garner's Modern American Usage. He is a guest contributor to the "On Language" column of The New York Times Magazine, and his articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and other publications.

Charlie has also been talking about language on the radio since 1985. He has been interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered and been a guest on hundreds of radio shows around the country. For five and a half years he cohosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called A Way with Words.

Charlie was born in New York City in 1957 and earned his B.A. cum laude from Yale in 1981. He lives in San Diego with his wife and two daughters.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
22 (84%)
4 stars
4 (15%)
3 stars
0 (0%)
2 stars
0 (0%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Shane Findlay.
866 reviews16 followers
March 8, 2022
Elster definitely knows his field of study. He is both informative and egocentric.
4.5*
Profile Image for Jared.
5 reviews8 followers
Read
May 20, 2015
I've listened to this collection several times and I my appreciation for it, and my vocabulary, expands each time. I wish I could say the same for my grammar.
Profile Image for C22English.
5 reviews
February 5, 2025
Elster doesn’t just teach words—he crafts a linguistic arsenal. This book isn’t about sounding smarter; it’s about thinking and communicating with greater clarity and impact.
Profile Image for cory.
168 reviews8 followers
February 12, 2008
as dictionarybreath ain't no transient (yeah - that sounds like transchent, not trans ee ant!), this is highly recommended! now at this point in time you can learn myriads of of manifold words!

Profile Image for Douglas.
158 reviews13 followers
December 30, 2008
Wanna be a dick with words? Use every advantage and opportunity you have to smash down idiocy.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.