Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions
Elizabeth Webber, Mike Feinsilber | Merriam-Webster (Sept 1999)
ISBN-10: 0877796289 | ISBN-13: 978-0877796282
PDF | English | 11 MB | 609 pages

This is like a shorter, more accessible, and American version of Brewer's Dictionary, which this book does cite as a reference. Other differences are that this provides a pronunciation guide for certain words and that contextual examples are drawn mostly from periodicals pre-1999.
It includes allusions to poems ("snows of yesteryear" and "waste its sweetness on the desert air"), the Bible ("Sodom and Gomorrah"), 20th century novels ("Peyton Place" and the "Snopes family" in Faulkner's works), Latin usage ("ex cathedra") and TV ("Eddie Haskell" and "Ozzie and Harriet").
There are explanations of such terms as Daliesque, scorched earth, ignorant armies (forces blindly fighting with each other with no understanding of whom they are fighting or why), gnomes of Zurich, Walpurgis Night, zero-sum game, Mobius strip, Peter Principle, Heimlich maneuver, and non-denial denial.
Reading it, I also learned that the NSA was known as the "puzzle palace."

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