About the Author
From Kevin Currie-Knight, at Reason.com: "My parents raised me not to use 'bad' language, but late in elementary school my friends and I learned both how to curse and how to turn off our cursing when grown-ups were around. Just as I wasn't supposed to curse around adults, I was, in some sense, expected to curse around my friends. Such experiences are explained in Michael Adams' new book, 'In Praise of Profanity.' The book's argument is not that we should use more profanity. It's that profanity evolved within the spontaneous order we call language to perform certain functions. Eliminate profanity and you'll eliminate those functions, making language less powerful."