This is a fun book and has lots of interesting info--but it's not particularly well organized. I enjoyed reading it but didn't like that the author doesn't site specific sources for individual facts (after complaining that other authors take too many liberties with the histories of place-names). ( )

A highly readable and moderately interesting tromp through the garden of place-names. It is very generalized, there is a nice bibliography, but no footnotes, and the book is not at all scholarly rigorous in any form or fashion. Sometimes I felt as though the chapters had no connective tissue, and there is very little underlying theory or pattern discernible to the act of place-naming, something people like George R. Stewart try to get at. Thus, this book is an enjoyable, trivia-full read, but not a serious weighty tome (which it never pretends to be). ( )