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The Kingdom of Speech
The Kingdom of Speech
Oct 1, 2024 8:34 PM

Author:Tom Wolfe

The Kingdom of Speech

'A great journalist with a whip-like satirical prose style… Wolfe’s great gift is to make the heavy seem light and this book is such an entertaining polemic that I read it in a day and immediately wanted to read it again.' - Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey through language. The Kingdom of Speech is a paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.

From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant here in our Kingdom of Speech.

Reviews

A great journalist with a whip-like satirical prose style… Wolfe’s great gift is to make the heavy seem light and this book is such an entertaining polemic that I read it in a day and immediately wanted to read it again.

—— Bryan Appleyard , Sunday Times

You’re in the hands of a master who has never written a dull word in his life. Tom Wolfe, America’s greatest man of letters, is 85 and still fizzing with energy and insight… Wolfe packs a lot in it, [The Kingdom of Speech] writing with the fluency and vigour of a man one-third his age.

—— James Delingpole , Mail on Sunday

The style is instantly recognisable, and the book hurtles on for 160 pages of wicked, opinionated, high-velocity prose.

—— Alun Anderson , New Scientist

A marvelous mix of gleeful energy and whip-around-the-neck control, and his book is a gas to read.

—— Charles Mann , Wall Street Journal (Europe)

It is clear how much we have missed him… The wonder of his book is its point of view. He is a polemicist, a slayer of reputation and pretension… It is wonderful to have him back.

—— Philip Delves Broughton , Financial Times

[Kingdom of Speech is] vastly entertaining… compulsively readable.

—— Muhammad Idrees Ahmad , National

It is a riveting read.

—— Alun Anderson , New Scientist

The story of an academic dispute in the world of linguistics is beautifully told by a world-class storyteller.

—— i

Touched by its bravery, sincerity and the frequent beauty of the writing

—— The Times

In this slim, stoic memoir... Rausing thoughtfully, painstakingly, works a deep groove into the stubborn surface of certain bedevilling questions: "How do you write about addiction?"... I nodded and sometimes cried. I wanted to invite the author over for tea

—— The Millions

This is a fierce, lyrical, and lucid memoir that asks agonizing questions about guilt, innocence, and judgment and reminds us how difficult it can be to untangle one from the other

—— Siri Hustvedt, author of 'The Blazing World'

A wonderful psychologist

—— Malcolm Gladwell

Like the best intellectual polymaths, Peterson invites his readers to embark on their own intellectual, spiritual and ideological journeys... You have nothing to lose but your own misery

—— Toronto Star

The most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshall McLuhan. His bold synthesis of psychology, anthropology, science, politics and comparative religion is forming a genuinely humanistic university of the future

—— Camille Paglia

Someone with not only humanity and humour, but serious depth and substance ... Peterson has a truly cosmopolitan and omnivorous intellect... There is a burning sincerity to the man

—— Spectator

A rock-star academic, a cool, cowboy-boot-wearing public thinker who directs tough love at overprotected youth ... Peterson twirls ideas around like a magician

—— Melanie Reid , The Times

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist whose seemingly overnight ascent to cultural rockstar comes after years of deep scholarship in many disciplines

—— Psychology Today

12 Rules for Life hits home - from identifying the deeply engrained hierarchical ladder that motivates our decision making to asking indispensable and sometimes politically unpopular questions about your life and suggesting ways to better it

—— Howard Bloom, author of 'The Lucifer Principle'

Peterson has become a kind of secular prophet who, in an era of lobotomised conformism, thinks out of the box ... His message is overwhelmingly vital

—— Melanie Philips , The Times

O’Reilly has an uncanny knack for charting what’s ahead. In WTF?, he shows us know he does it. At a time of sweeping change, it is a bracing and an exhilarating read.

—— Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO, New America

Excellent . . . Tim knows this stuff as well as anyone, and there’s never been a more important moment to understand the issues raised in this book.

—— Quartz

For more than two decades, Tim O’Reilly has been the conscience of the tech industry . . . His new book WTF? seizes on this singular moment in history, in which just about everything makes us say “WTF?”

—— Wired

One of the biggest names in technology.

—— BBC World Service , Click

O’Reilly’s vision is more Utopian than dystopian, even downright optimistic in a roundabout, creative-destruction sort of way. The positive outlook is refreshing and engaging.

—— Kirkus Reviews

No one is better at understanding the future than Tim O’Reilly. He has an intuitive feel and a deep knowledge of technology. This book makes sense of the astonishing transformations that are happening around us and is an indispensable guidebook to tomorrow.

—— Walter Isaacson

Yong has captured the essence of this exciting field, expressing the enthusiasm and wonder that the scientific community feels when working with the microbiome. It is rare that a writer has the capacity to speak to the public and the scientific world with equanimity; Yong has succeeded in delivering a compelling and informative exploration of a vast research field and a fundamental work that can stand as textbook and a rip-roaring read!

—— Professor Jack Gilbert, University of Chicago

With a simply wonderful book, Ed Yong opens the doorway to a hidden world around and inside us. He's smart, he's witty, and he's at the cutting edge. You could not get a better guide.

—— Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist Strikes Back and Messy

Ed Yong is one of our finest young explainers of science—wicked smart, broadly informed, sly, savvy, so illuminating. And this is an encyclopedia of fascinations—a teeming intellectual ecosystem, a keen book on the intricacies of the microbiome and more.

—— David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover

This compelling and beautifully written book will change the way people look at the world around, and within, them. It provides an insight into the latest research in the field, and into the people doing the work, that is unmatched by any other book on the microbiome to date. Certainly among the best books in an increasingly crowded field and written with a true passion for and understanding of the microbiome.

—— Professor Rob Knight, University of California

A whistle-stop tour of the microbial world for the non-expert… Yong has won numerous awards for his science writing…it doesn’t take long to realise why.

—— Florence Greatix , Chemistry World

A marvellous book! Ed Yong’s brilliant gift for storytelling and precise writing about science converge in I Contain Multitudes to make the invisible and tiny both visible and mighty. A unique, entertaining, and smart read.

—— Jeff Vandermeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy

[A] magnificent revaluation of bacteriology.

—— Kate Womersley , Spectator

This is a book of wonder.

—— Bookseller

A state-of-the art look at what we know about microbes… Yong makes difficult concepts and scientific terms easy to understand – and his excitement at the variety and wonder of nature makes him an enthusiastic and engaging writer’

—— Kate Whiting , UK Press Syndication

The complex relationships between microbes and their environments are explored with rigour and humour.

—— Bridie Pritchard , Northern Echo

A deep and sensible dive in to this complex and fascinating dimension of biology.

—— Irish Times, Book of the Year

[It] is superbly judged. It brilliantly synthesises the surprising and recently-revealed inter-dependencies of visible and invisible organisms… Look out for it on numerous book prize shortlists in 2017.

—— Guardian, Book of the Year

Yong will make you think about yourself – and the world around you – in a different way.

—— Brad Davies , i

It is a fascinating account of the unseen creatures that live within and all around us. Yong takes us on this journey through the microscope to discover the most recent research from scientists all round the world and tell us of the secrets that are being discovered about microbes… Yong writes with an engaging and eloquent style and makes the science in here really accessible. Well worth reading.

—— Paul Cheney , Nudge

Yong’s enthusiasm for bacteria is infectious, as he describes the beauty of luminescent bacteria in the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the benefits of our microscopic neighbours.

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

A master class in popular scientific education.

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

Yong made me think “wow” over and over again. He tells us that there is a universe of tiny things. We should think about them.

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

Enlightenment Now seeks to undo, with facts and figures, the pessimism that has paralysed the world ... We must read this book and absorb its message

—— El Pais (Colombia)

Guys, it's really not that bad. In fact, it's the best it's ever been ... Pinker urges people to look at the bigger picture and dive into the data

—— New York Post

Things are not as bad as your Facebook news feed makes them seem ... a cheerful, contrarian tract for dark times

—— Niall Ferguson , Boston Globe

Compelling ... At a moment when liberal Enlightenment values are under attack, from the right and the left, this is a very important contribution ... An impressive and useful accomplishment

—— Atlantic
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