Babel No More
by Michael Erard (Free Press, $26)
Michael Erard went looking for hyperpolyglots—people who speak 11 languages or more—and came back with a “captivating” study of language itself, said Maria Popova in TheAtlantic.com. Some interesting characters turn up. Giuseppe Mezzofanti, a 19th-century cardinal, allegedly spoke 72 tongues, while Ziad Fazah held the 20th-century record until he appeared on TV and fumbled several languages. Examining such outliers, Erard manages to probe “the limits of the human brain.”
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The Language Wars
by Henry Hitchings (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)
Henry Hitchings has a message for all self-righteous grammarians: Get over yourselves. In this delightful tour of the history of so-called “proper” English, said Tucker Shaw in The Denver Post, Hitchings proves that for any living language change is the only constant. He “brings a deep respect for the sanctity of communication and the usefulness of rules,” but “values curiosity over knowledge, debate over absolutism.” With this book, he’s “earned a place at the head table of contemporary linguists.”
Speaking American
by Richard W. Bailey (Oxford, $28)
If you want further proof that language is “a living, evolving force,” check out Richard Bailey’s history of American English, said Chris Tucker in The Dallas Morning News. Though this book “sometimes bogs down in scholarly minutiae about diphthongs and interdental fricatives,” it contains plenty of fun anecdotes about the evolution of such words as “punke” and “goober.” Speaking American is “not a smooth and tidy vessel,” but “neither is the language it surveys.”
The Flame Alphabet
by Ben Marcus (Knopf, $26)
Communication is literally a killer in Ben Marcus’s “chilly yet passionate” new novel, said Jeff VanderMeer in CSMonitor.com. Marcus’s dystopian nightmare of a story gets rolling when words spoken by young children begin to sicken and kill adults. When one teenager’s speech begins afflicting her parents, her father leaves the family to find a cure. Marcus’s allegory is more about a father’s love than about language, but it “may make readers think more carefully about the words they share.”
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Freakier Friday: Lohan and Curtis reunite for 'uneven' but 'endearing' sequelThe Week Recommends Mother-and-daughter comedy returns with four characters switching bodies
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Al fresco art: the UK's best sculpture parksThe Week Recommends Soak up the scenery with a stroll through these open-air galleries
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”