Books on Rhetoric & Prose That You Worship

[David]

What books on usage, rhetoric & prose do you worship & rely on as guiding lights?

Here are mine:

"Modern English Usage," H.W. Fowler, Ernest Gowers revision (1965). Later revisions (by M. Nicholson & Robert Burchfield) are unfortunate products of revisionist thinking & planning. Avoid them.

"The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage & Style," Bryan Garner (2001). Garner is this country's leading usage light. He has solved the problem of balancing tradition & contemporaneity; he recognizes that language changes, but changes for bad a lot more often than for good.

"Modern American Usage," Wilson Follett (1965). The cornerstone of good American English in the modern era. Lovingly finished & edited by Jacques Barzun, Lionel Trilling & others after Follett's premature death.

"The Complete Plain Words," Sir Ernest Gowers, revised by Sidney Greenbaum & Janet Whitcut (1986). Combines "Plain Words" (1948) & "The ABC of Plain Words" (1951), two masterpieces of prose style by a British civil servant & master annotater of Fowler.

"Simple & Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers," Jacques Barzun (1975).

"On Writing, Editing, & Publishing: Essays Explicative & Hortatory," Jacques Barzun (1986). Barzun is the nonpareil of English usage style & standards of the latter 20th century. His sensible insights & lapidary prose are abundant in all his four or five dozen books, from 1937 to the present.

"Usage & Abusage," Eric Partridge (1955). Partridge is the greatest lexicographer of slang in the west. He successfully abridged this book in 1969.

"The Reader Over Your Shoulder," Robert Graves & Alan Hodge (1961). The greatest English-language love poet of the 20th century & his colleague wrote this handbook for writers of prose, & supplied dozens of "negative examples" for examination, their plan a sort of explication de texte for sense & clarity.