The Power of Babel
by John McWhorter | 
Alpha Beta
by John Man |
A History of the English Language
by Albert C. Baugh |
The Stories of English
by David Crystal |
The Story of English
by Robert McCrum | 
How Language Works
by David Crystal |
The Adventure of English
by Melvyn Bragg | 
The First Word
by Christine Kenneally | 
The Unfolding of Language
by Guy Deutscher | 
The Language Wars
by Henry Hitchings | 
The Loom of Language
by Frederick Bodmer | 
Through the Language Glass
by Guy Deutscher | 
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
by John McWhorter |
Language Play
by David Crystal | 
Language Made Plain
by Anthony Burgess |
Ad Infinitum
by Nicholas Ostler | 
The Mother Tongue
by Bill Bryson | 
Dead Wake
by Erik Larson | 
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs | 
One Summer: America, 1927
by Bill Bryson |
Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word is the first history of the world's great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions to the engaging self-regard of Greek and to the struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe, these epic achievements and more are brilliantly explored, as are the fascinating failures of once "universal" languages. A splendid, authoritative, and remarkable work, it demonstrates how the language history of the world eloquently reveals the real character of our planet's diverse peoples and prepares us for a linguistic future full of surprises.