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.

George Washington's cultural attaché : the definer of American identity -- From farmboy to best-selling author. Hartford childhood and Yale manhood ; Spelling the new nation ; Traveling salesman -- Founding father. Counting his way across America ; Courtship at the Constitutional Convention ; Marriage and a turn away from words ; Editor of New York City's first daily -- Lexicographer. Setting his sights on Johnson and Johnson, Jr. ; Paterfamilias ; A lost decade ; The walking dictionary ; "More fleshy than ever before" -- Webster's after Webster : the director of defining.