Language Books

This post may be more suited to comp.lang but I am hoping for some
different points of view.


Can anyone out there give me your recommendation on books on programming
language design? (not compiler design itself, but overlap between the
two would be ok, I guess) I went out to amazon.com and clbooks.com, and
there were actually too many choices. But I don't want to spend $50 on
a book based on a one paragraph blurb.


I am looking for something that explains and contrasts most of the major
paradigms (imperative, object-oriented, functional, logic) and whatever
other minor flavors are out there now. Also, any book that goes into
formal specification of semantics (as opposed to the grammar) would be
interesting as long as it's not too abstract or mathematical. (Is that
possible?) To give you some idea of my background, I've programmed for
10 years, but never written a compiler or designed a programming
language. I have been studying the "Dragon" book, though.


Thanks in advance,


Russ
[Language design has always been appropriate for comp.compilers so long as
it has some relation to compiler design. No arguments about where the
semicolon goes, though. -John]
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