INTERVIEWS:

WITH ANETA PAVLENKO ON REASONS TO LEARN LATIN:  psychologytoday.com

WITH JOHN MCWHORTER ON LEXICON VALLEY:  slate.com

WITH JOE DONOHUE ON WAMC:  wamc.org

CONVERSTION WITH PHILIP FREEMAN AND MICHAEL FONTAINE  eidolon.pub

WITH GIL ROTH  ON VIRTUAL MEMORIES:  chimeraobscura.com

LEGENDARY EDITORS PANEL:  https://www.c-span.org/video/?168595-1/evening-legendary-editors

QUOTES FROM OTHER WRITERS:

“What an enchanting tribute not simply to Latin, but to the power words possess to transform a life.  Language is the heroine of this passionate, engaging book. Ann Patty has written her way fearlessly—and even comically—past loss and disappointment into a radiant new way of life and love.”
–Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist’s Daughter

“I never expected to finish a book on language with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. But Latin is no ordinary language, and Ann Patty is no ordinary writer. As she wrestles with the mysteries of Ovid and Virgil, the millennia fall away and the ancients come brilliantly to life. But in the end, what is illuminated is a more recent history—the dark corners of her own past. I don’t know the Latin for ‘Wow!’ So I’ll steal a word from this captivating book: Splendidissimus!”—Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I and, with Stewart Kellerman, Origins of the Specious  

“From amo, amas in Poughkeepsie to latter-day Latinists on the Palatine Hill, Ann Patty’s late-life affair with Latin has everything: grammar, gossip, lovely gray hair, lust, and mother woes. A book after my own heart.”–Mary Norris, author of Between You and Me

“It’s not just the fascination of getting a crash course in Latin that fuels this unique, interesting memoir; it’s the spirit, mind, and wit of a woman of a certain age who refuses to sit back; get soft, boring, and stupid; and otherwise give up on life. Ann Patty’s entry into the world of a language and its colorful history is a wonderful incentive to all of us to get off the couch, stay out of the refrigerator, and find a passion that will light up our days. I loved this book and the smart, enormously likable woman who has breathed so much life into its pages.”
—George Hodgman, author of Bettyville  

“A  marvelous, moving  account of a brilliant, vulnerable woman who  has to reinvent herself, and who does so by studying the language that has most influenced our own.  Ann Patty’s  struggles and triumphs with Latin’s complex laws and mysteries enrich the reader  even as they lead her to a  new and deeper understanding of the complexities of her own life, past and present, and of her place in the world.”–Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life
 

“This lively, refreshingly candid and high-spirited book courses with an infectious love of language, and is buoyed by the author’s engaging personality, which shines through on every page.”
 –Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront:  A Walk Around Manhattan 

“A lovely elegy to a dead language and a dead mother, reclaiming both from the past and firmly placing them in the luminous present. This is a lively, passionate, learned and affecting book about language and love, loss and redemption.”–Yann Martel, Author of Life of Pi

“Patty vivaciously recounts her embrace of  Latin and the manifold ways it changed her life.  This captivating and charming memoir shows how the study of Latin can be another form of meditation, another way of slowing down” — Publisher’s Weekly