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You Don't Say

UM Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, And What They Mean By Michael Erard | Anchor. 303 pp. $14.95

Michael Erard calls his book Um"a work of applied blunderology," but, more simply, it is a primer on the science and history of bungled speech. "Why do verbal blunders happen?" Erard asks, and "What do they mean?" In seeking answers, Erard, a journalist with a master's degree in linguistics, sifts through the copious research on all matter of inarticulateness, explaining the difference, for example, between a blooper ("a slip of the tongue, usually made in a performance") and a gaffe ("Deviations in behavior from the norm because the individual doesn't know the norm."). He also mines history for examples of the linguistically challenged, such as Thomas Jefferson, whom he describes as "a verbal bungler with a lisp," and our current president. It's a mistake to dismiss verbal errors, Erard contends, as simply "embarrassing and marring"; rather, he argues, they should be seen, even celebrated, for what they reveal about the human mind.

GUT FEELINGS The Intelligence of the Unconscious By Gerd Gigerenzer | Penguin. 280 pp. $15

The premise of Gerd Gigerenzer's Gut Feelings -- an exploration of "how the mind adapts and economizes by relying on the unconscious, on rules of thumb, and on evolved capacities" rather than on logic -- may be familiar to readers of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. This is understandable, given that Gladwell drew heavily on Gigerenzer's research. In this accessible pop science book, Gigerenzer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, expounds on his theories. He uses numerous examples, ranging from medical diagnoses to the logistics of catching a fly ball, to make the case that "intuition is the steering wheel through life." Gigerenzer has a light touch, offering nifty logic games that encourage readers to interact with the book, turning it upside down and covering one eye, for instance, to demonstrate the role of inference in problem solving. "A beneficial degree of ignorance can be valuable," he writes, and his slender volume will inform you just enough.

FOUR-LETTER WORDS And Other Secrets of a Crossword Insider By Michelle Arnot | Perigree. 214 pp. $13.95

Three decades ago Michelle Arnot abandoned her graduate studies in 18th-century French literature for a far less high-falutin' pursuit: crossword-puzzle writing. Since her first puzzle was published in 1977 by the New York Times for a cool $20, Arnot has become an expert, creating and editing numerous puzzles and collections, teaching courses and writing books on the subject, including What's Gnu?: A History of the Crossword Puzzle. In her new book, Arnot focuses on the four-letter word, "not the naughty ones," she explains, "but the cute, oddball four-letter words that grout the grids of American crosswords." These essential puzzle-fillers (and their typical clues) are woven through the text and listed in a handy appendix. For non-aficionados, the book offers a breezy history of the pastime, including tidbits about such word-puzzle enthusiasts as Norman Mailer, Russell Baker and Dick Cavett, who, she writes, "can take the letters of your name and come up with a quip using the same letters." From Richard A. Cavett, she notes, he produced "Catch It a Rare VD."

From Our Previous Reviews

· Howard Frank Mosher conjures "a wonderfully intriguing sense of place" in his novel On Kingdom Mountain (Mariner, $13.95), a "whimsical" tale about a "guarded iconoclast" battling developers in rural Vermont in 1930, according to Steve Amick.

· In her "luminous" memoir, A Mirror Garden (Vintage, $15.95), Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (with Zara Houshmand) recalls her early life as a child of wealth in pre-revolutionary Iran. Her "love for her original homeland shines through almost every passage," commented Juliet Wittman.

· "In an era when high-profile rappers, comedians and public intellectuals craft contorted defenses for the use of the word 'nigger,' " wrote Peniel E. Joseph, The N Word (Mariner, $14.95), by Jabari Asim, "provides an important, timely and much-needed critical intervention about this enduringly controversial subject."

Nora Krug is a regular contributor to Book World.