The provocative classic work newly updated An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, Thy Neighbor's Wife , shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia—through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another.

这是一本薄薄的小书。首版于1918年由纽约一家出版社出版。作者William Strunk,康耐尔大学英语教授，E.B.怀特对此书加以了修正。此书短小精悍，容量巨大。涵盖了母语英语的人写作和用法上常出的错误，也清晰地解释了一些语法书中很难找到的语言现象。虽然是为说英语的学生所写,但对于任何需要进一步了解英文用法，进而学习书写英文的人，这本书必不可少的。

本书原称Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English（简称OALD），其英文本自问世以来历经三次修订，在本世纪下半叶40多年中一直风行全世界，受到广大读者的热烈欢迎。1988年，我馆经牛津大学出版准许，在内地出版发行《牛津现代高级英汉双解词典》（简化汉字本），其英文本即本词典的第三版。1989年，牛津大学出版推出扁英文本的第四版，由著名语言学家A·P·COWIE 主持，对第三版又作了全面的修订，使扁的篇幅比第三版增加了50%以上，在选词、注音、释义、例证、用法说明、句型符号以及习语的收录等各个方面都城作了更新，因而内容更丰富、更实用、更切合非英语国家广大英语学习者的需求，堪称当今英语词典之佼佼者。1994年，词典的英汉双解本问世，书名改称《牛津高阶英汉双解词典》。经牛津大学出版惠允，我馆可在内地出版发行上述英汉双解版的简化汉字本，也就是摆在读者面前的这一本书。//本书出版前，经牛津大学出版同意，我们对原书在文字上作了一些技术处理，使之更符合内地读者的习惯。如有不妥之处，敬请读者指正。//商务印书馆编辑部//1997年7月

Designed to achieve two goals: to add a large number of words to your permanent working vocabulary, and to teach the most useful of the classical word-building roots to help you continue expanding your vocabulary in the future. Greek and Latin have been the sources of most of the words in the English Language. You could find much fun in this book that some of the fashion words are come from an elegent sources dated back to thousands of years. Also, you could enjoy the infinite discovery through reading it, which is not merely a dictionary, but a wonderful educational and enlightening book.