The painstaking care she spent over the years perfecting this transnational and multilingual treatment of classical reception has ensured a clear exposition of the book's main thematic concern with the quaquaversal nature of strife in the West.

Often, the words are nothing more than a curiosity--today, for instance, this was the English offering: quaquaversal . The Italian entry was concasse and dadolata, both culinary terms, the first showing a clear French connection.