Simon Winchester wrote a great book a few years back called The Meaning of Everything--about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Check out the excerpt that Amazon gives us for free--click on "excerpt" when you go here.
Also: read the timeline of the OED here. Starting in 1884 is amusing and edifying.
If you want to get rich and famous by solving word puzzles (or at least the latter), figure out Will Shortz's weekly puzzle on National Public Radio. Read this week's puzzle here. If you solve it, you might get picked to be on the Weekend Edition program with him. Who's Will Shortz, you ask? Only the greatest enigmatologist, that's all!
