?Although this is mainly a work in intellectual history about Polish mathematician Alfred Korzybski, whose theory of general semantics influenced American intellectuals in the 1930s, it also provides an introduction to those ideas in general semantics, some of which were popularized in the widely read works of S. I. Hayakawa. As intellectual history the book succeeds, in clear and interesting prose, in creating a case study of the transfer of ideas from one culture (Polish, in this case) to another (American); and the author, a prize-winning historian, does a competent job of laying out the influences of both cultures on the semantic theory. ... Upper-division undergraduate level and above.?-Choice