Ralph Keyes Book & "A Billion Here..."

[Fred Shapiro]

Ralph Keyes, whose book _Nice Guys Finish Seventh_ was the first quotation
book to really make clear how much Bartlett's and the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations could be improved upon, has a new book out, _The Quote
Verifier_.  His research findings are modest compared to the forthcoming
_Yale Book of Quotations_, but he has some good stuff and has drawn to
some extent on ADS-L (through Google searches?), thus scooping me on
certain items.

An example where he seems to have done his own ProQuest searching
and made good discoveries is the famous Dirksenism "A billion here, a
billion there..."  Keyes has gone way beyond Barry and myself and found a
version of this in the _N.Y. Times_ in 1938.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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