John McWhorter

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Illinois

English

A Natural History of Language

"An essay in origins ... as theoretical as Hawking and Gorst in trying to see into the deep past. McWhorter is a clear and witty writer."-- Harper's

In the first book written for the layperson about the natural history of language, linguistic professor John McWhorter ranges across linguistic theory, geography, history, and pop culture to tell the fascinating story of how thousands of very different languages have evolved from a single, original source in a natural process similar to biological evolution.

There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, linguistics professor John McWhorter reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment. Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, Creoles, and nonstandard dialects.

The Power of Babel

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Massachusetts

How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric. Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We’re told to read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is “appropriation.” We hear that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being Black makes you a victim. We want to speak up but fear we’ll be seen as unwoke, or worse, labeled a racist. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion—and one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist. In Woke Racism, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of “white privilege” and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervor of the “woke mob.” He shows how this religion that claims to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. The new religion might be called “antiracism,” but it features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past. Fortunately for Black America, and for all of us, it’s not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogram friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, Black America.

Woke Racism

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Minnesota

Self-Sabotage in Black America

Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. Now he dares to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected black America. Losing the Race explores the three main components of this cultural virus: the cults of victimology, separatism, and antiintellectualism that are making blacks their own worst enemies in the struggle for success. More angry than Stephen Carter, more pragmatic and compassionate than Shelby Steele, more forward-looking than Stanley Crouch, McWhorter represents an original and provocative point of view. With Losing the Race, a bold new voice rises among black intellectuals.

Losing the Race

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Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

North Carolina

Connecticut

World Languages

A professor of linguistics paints a controversial portrait of defeatism and pessimism in black America that threatens to hold young African Americans back.

Losing the Race 

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Arizona

#paperback #newyorktimesbestseller #linguistics #AfricanAmerican #language #racism

Iowa

#paperback #nonfiction #linguistics #language #history #science

Texas

Social Studies

Florida

Missouri

Natural history of Language

The Power of Bable

#hardcover #language #etymology #sociology #nonfiction #socialscience #history #words


Maine

English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech - the urgency with which we say 'f..k!' is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger. Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.

Nine Nasty Words

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Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. In this book he dared to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected Black America. Losing the Race explores the three main components of this cultural virus: the cults of victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism that are making Black people their own worst enemies in the struggle for success. With Losing the Race, a bold new voice rises among Black intellectuals.

New York

History

 Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America 

Set of 3 audio CDs about human language. 36 lectures. #greatcourses #language #audio #teachingcompany

"I never met a person who is not interested in language," wrote the bestselling author and psychologist Steven Pinker. There are good reasons that language fascinates us so. It not only defines humans as a species, placing us head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators, but it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries. Dr. John McWhorter, one of America's leading linguists and a frequent commentator on network television and National Public Radio, addresses these and other questions as he takes you on an in-depth, 36-lecture tour of the development of human language, showing how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago has evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today. An accomplished scholar, Professor McWhorter is also a skilled popularizer, whose book The Power of Babel was called "startling, provocative, and remarkably entertaining," by the San Diego Union-Tribune. The London Times called him "a born teacher." And Steven Pinker, best known as the author of The Language Instinct, offered this praise for the book: "McWhorter's arguments are sharply reasoned, refreshingly honest, and thoroughly original." Discover How Linguists Think For the past century linguistics has been one of the most exciting and productive fields in the social sciences. In the process of telling the story of language, Professor McWhorter introduces you to some of the current controversies in the discipline. He also briefs you on the recent connection made between an obscure language of Nepal and the language family of Papua New Guinea, which may represent the oldest documentable historical relationship between words, extending back as far as 75,000 years. In discovering how linguists think, you will begin to see language in an entirely new way. You will learn that everything about a language is eternally and inherently changeable, from its word order and grammar to the very sound and meaning of basic words. That's why Professor McWhorter describes language as "like one of those lava lamps from the 1970s. It's not marching toward an ideal, and it's not slowly going to the dogs. It's always just variations of the same thing-endless morphings." A Wealth of Examples from a Teacher Passionate about Language In an interview with the New York Times on October 30, 2001, Professor McWhorter said this about himself: "Languages have been a passion since I was a small child. I used to teach them to myself as a hobby. I speak three and a bit of Japanese, and can read seven." In this course, he includes these languages and many more as examples. Anyone who has ever studied a language will surely find it discussed-along with Albanian, Armenian, Turkish, Sanskrit, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan, Korean, Tagalog, Maori, Fijian, Samoan, Gullah, Hopi, Mohawk, Navajo, Yupik Eskimo, Quechua, and Welsh, as well as Latin, Greek, German, Russian, French, Spanish, Swedish, and many others. It's remarkable how much one language sheds light on another. For example, the ancestor language of English is Proto-Germanic and the ancestor of that is Proto-Indo-European. A curious transformation took place in the consonants of Proto-Germanic, in which Proto-Indo-European p became f, d became t; and so on with other consonant pairs. Hence, Latin pater is English father, and Latin decem is English ten. This rule is called Grimm's Law after its discoverer, the same Jacob Grimm who collected folk tales. Such patterns make relationships among different languages clear and make learning these languages much easier. "The Armory of the Human Mind" Professor McWhorter covers a wealth of material, enlivened with wit and personal observations. Language is indeed a powerful tool-"the armory of the human mind" in the words of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. With this course, you will be richly rewarded in investigating what linguists have learned about the origin and evolution of the marvelous gift of speech.

The Story of Human Language

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John H. McWhorter

California

Challenges the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which claims that the language people speak shapes the way they perceive the world, arguing against the use of language as a lens through which to better understand human nature.

The Language Hoax

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slightly bent up top but otherwise good condition 

Japanese has a term that covers both green and blue. Russian has separate terms for dark and light blue. Does this mean that Russians perceive these colors differently from Japanese people? Does language control and limit the way we think? This short, opinionated book addresses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that the language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world. Linguist John McWhorter argues that while this idea is mesmerizing, it is plainly wrong. It is language that reflects culture and worldview, not the other way around. The fact that a language has only one word for eat, drink, and smoke doesn't mean its speakers don't process the difference between food and beverage, and those who use the same word for blue and green perceive those two colors just as vividly as others do. McWhorter shows not only how the idea of language as a lens fails but also why we want so badly to believe it: we're eager to celebrate diversity by acknowledging the intelligence of peoples who may not think like we do. Though well-intentioned, our belief in this idea poses an obstacle to a better understanding of human nature and even trivializes the people we seek to celebrate. The reality -- that all humans think alike -- provides another, better way for us to acknowledge the intelligence of all peoples.

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John McWhorter

The Power of Babel

John McWhorter

Woke Racism

John McWhorter

Losing the Race

John McWhorter

Woke Racism

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The Power of Babel

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Losing the Race

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The Power of Babel

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Losing the Race

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The Power of Babel

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The Power of Babel

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The Power of Bable

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Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America

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The Story of Human Language

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The Language Hoax

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