Nunberg was the author of a number of popular books, among them Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Controversial Times (2004).

[1] Nunberg was born in 1945 to his mother, a high school teacher, and his father, a commercial real estate worker.

He grew up in the suburbs of New York City, and as a teenager he was attracted to the growing beatnik scene in nearby Greenwich Village.

Nunberg commented on language, usage, and society for National Public Radio's Fresh Air program since 1988.

The critic Malcolm Jones described Nunberg's method in that book as follows: "His means of studying the problem is utterly fresh: take a word, and the attitudes behind it and see where they came from and what they might say about us.