An unusual and authoritative 'natural history of languages' that narrates the ways in which one language has superseded or outlasted another at different times in history.[...]
An in-depth biography of the Latin language from its very beginnings to the present day from the widely acclaimed author of 'Empires of the Word'.[...]
An offbeat natural history of language takes readers from the educational and cultural innovators of Sumeria, to the resilience of Chinese, to the global spread of English, in a volume that offers linguistic perspectives on numerous past and present civilizations. Reprint.[...]
'Justice' and 'democracy' have alternated as dominant themes in political philosophy over the last fifty years. Since its revival in the middle of the twentieth century, political philosophy has focused on first one and then the other of these two themes. Rarely, however, has it succeeded in holding[...]
"An absorbing, scholarly account of the history of the Latin language, from its origins in antiquity to its afterlife in our own time..."Ad Infinitum" treats its readers with the dignity of Roman citizens."--"The""Wall Street Journal"The Latin language has been the one constant in the cultural histo[...]
A revelatory and exhilarating tour de force, Nicholas Ostler's "The Last Lingua Franca: The Rise and Fall of World Languages" explores the rise of a linguistic diversity we could never before have imagined. In the twenty-first century, can we really take the dominance of English for granted? In thei[...]