Hello and welcome to the back of the book, your new favorite arts and culture podcast.

I'm your host, Christopher Scalia, a senior fellow at the

American Enterprise Institute, and the author of the still kind of new book, 13 novels,

Conservatives Will Love, but probably haven't read. My guest today is Brian A. Gardner,

distinguished research professor of law at Southern Methodist University.

Brian is a lexicographer, grammarian, and the author of many books. Some of those books are written

for lawyers, including Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage, and the last six editions of Black's Law Dictionary.

Plus, my personal favorites, reading law, the interpretation of legal texts, and making

your case, the art of persuading judges, both co-written with Justice Antonin Scalia.

He's also written and continues to edit some of the

best guides to the English language for general readers and writers, including Garner's modern

English usage and the Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation. He writes a monthly column

for National Review called Garner the Grammarian, and he still somehow found time to write a brand new book called The Etcher, The Life and Art of Oscar Stozel, published today, as we're recording, by Godine Press.

Brian, welcome to the back of the book.

Well, thank you, Christopher. Glad to be here. Well, to quote a wise man, who was Oscar Stossel?

And why did you want to write a book about him? Well, it's a funny thing. Stossel is the only... Now, by the way, Germans and Austrians would say Schtosel, Stostle. One of the things that Oscar, the artist, did when he came over to the United States,

was anglicize his spelling and get rid of the umlaut. And I would like to think, although I don't know this definitely,

that he also anglicized the pronunciation,

and it became Stosel instead of Stossel.

But why would I want to write a book about him?

Well, in 2014, I was in San Francisco at this great antiquarian book dealer called Meyer Boswell Books,

and I bought two autographed portraits of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

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