content: This is a wonderful book. It shows that Bierce was a truly modern realist with a sense of humor. Bierce's definitions were pithy and funny one hundred years ago, and they still are.This particular edition is a reprint of Bierce's original authorized edition which is becoming hard to find. Most publishers seem to feel the need to delete some of the politically incorrect definitions that were part of the time and place of America around the turn of the twentieth century. Others can't seem to help themselves; they add their own definitions which are often not funny or clever and are nowhere near authentic. It is like having an amateur artist add a few brushstrokes, here and there, to a Rembrandt painting. This edition does not do that injustice to this wonderful book.