Staff Picks: Books Staff-recommended reading from the Noah
Webster and His Words What are the top two most popular books
printed in the English language? The Bible is the number one
most popular book printed in English and the second most popular
book printed in English is Webster’s Dictionary of the English
Language. Noah Webster was born on a farm in West Hartford,
Connecticut in 1758. Noah didn’t want to be a farmer, he wanted
to be a scholar. He went to school at Yale and graduated in 1778
and became a teacher. He soon realized there were no books about
America; Noah wanted American schoolbooks! America was a new
country and America needed a national language and government.
Americans were spelling words any way they wanted, the same word
might be spelled ten different ways in ten different places. So,
Noah wrote an American spelling book so that Americans would
spell every word the same way, every time, everywhere. Noah had
the publisher put a blue cover on it so that people could just
ask for the “blue-