I once told someone how much I enjoy Dave Barry's column, and that person went out and bought a hardcover collection of Barry's columns for me. I was excited at first, but as I sat down to read, well, it was clear that Barry's columns work well only as columns, lightening the heavy ore in the news and even on the arts pages.

If you like listening to Geoffrey Nunberg's essays about language on the public radio talk show "Fresh Air" hosted by Terry Gross and enjoy reading his contributions to The New York Times' "Week in Review" section, you might be tempted to get his new book, Going Nucular.

But unless you're a huge fan and really just want to pad his pockets, don't bother.

The essays probably work well enough in their original settings. But reading over and over about something that happened "last week" or about references to topics in the news that are no longer in the news just gets tedious.

Worse is when he essentially plagiarizes himself. It's perfectly acceptable for him to criticize President Bush for his use of the word "crusade" in the San Jose Mercury News Sept. 30, 2001, and then make the same point again in a radio bit two weeks later. But it makes for an obnoxious book when those two "chapters" follow each other.

In Nucular, the reader gets to see a fairly predictable pattern emerge in which Nunberg dips into the stream of current events, ladles a particular word into his own snifter, swirls it around among his ponderous jowls and then spits it out on us. Often, it's a mouthful of left-leaning screed.

Sure, he does some research. But that mostly consists of a computer search for word usage, so nearly every essay has some sort of line trying to lend credibility to what is most often just his own liberal rants.

Here's a typical one: "An Alta Vista search turns up more than 7,500 pages where 'fascist' or 'fascism' appears within 10 words of 'Ashcroft' or 'Bush.' "

Thoughtless liberals will stick their fists in the air after reading that, but more perceptive liberals and conservatives alike know that the first page of an Internet search is just not the same as research.

It's too bad, really. I'm a big word fan and was looking forward to reading this book, especially his analysis of the word "nuclear." Ever since I was in a college dorm where we would refer to especially vicious verbal assaults as "going nuclear," I've been fascinated with the use of the word. I looked forward to reading Nunberg's take, given that the whole book was named for it.

Unfortunately, the essay from which the book takes its title doesn't go very deep; like all of the other columns, it's just a few hundred words of exposition with a political agenda.

In this case, it's about the pronunciation of the word - hence the misspelling - by our president. The writer contorts himself so as to appear that's he's not just bashing George W. Bush. In the end, he doesn't say much of anything - and he bashes the president anyway.

I'm not exactly sure why the Times publishes Nunberg's essays at all when the Times' magazine publishes a similar column every week by William Safire.

Because Safire is a conservative columnist, perhaps the editors of the "Week in Review" section think they need a liberal take on language just to make sure that old Safire isn't slipping a conservative Mickey Finn into the Paper of Record's word cocktail.

Nunberg could learn a lot from Safire, though. For one thing, Safire writes all that's interesting about a word, then stops. Nunberg seems to just go on and on.

Also, Safire only talks about the words and doesn't project his own thinking into the brains of others. Writing once of Justice Antonin Scalia, Nunberg notes that "it isn't likely he really buys the logic" contained in his own opinion. Look, if a Supreme Court justice issues a written opinion, I think he or she probably "buys" the logic just fine.

In another essay, Nunberg examines some of the code words for liberals and conservatives, looking at what each drinks. "Chablis" is clearly something favored by liberals. But then Nunberg goes on to say that he "feels sorry" for conservatives who would like to drink something else, but drink beer out of some sense of political loyalty. Please.

If every essay were innovative and original, this would be a decent book, but with repetitive, old-news columns stitched together, this is just a bore.

Scott C. Yates is a Denver writer and entrepreneur.