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A revolutionary account of the origins of language from one of the world's best known and most influential linguists

About the Author

Dan Everett worked in the Amazon jungles of Brazil for over 30 years, among more than one dozen different tribal groups. He has published extensively on language and culture and is one of the world's most influential thinkers in both fields. His Don't Sleep, There are Snakes was selected by Blackwell's bookstores as one of the best of 2009, was an 'editor's choice' of the Sunday Times and has been the subject of a film and a play. He is currently Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Very few books on the biological and cultural origin of humanity can be ranked as classics. I believe that Daniel Everett's How Language Began will be one of them.
*Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University*

How Language Began occupies a rare literary space that explains complex issues clearly to general readers while being an original contribution to scholarship...the arguments he marshals and insights he provides are impressive...anyone interested in language would gain from reading this book.
*Times*

Ambitious...the subject-matter is completely enthralling...Everett is at the very top of his intellectual game.
*Spectator*

Important and fascinating
*Prospect*

Everett is skilled at leavening an intellectually challenging treatise with humor ... A worthy book for general readers
*Kirkus Reviews*

Praise for Language: The Cultural Tool:
'A book whose importance is almost impossible to overstate.
*Sunday Times*

Revelatory. There is nothing about humans that is quite as astonishing as language.
*Guardian*

Impressively modest and reasoned.
*Economist*

The most important - and provocative - anthropological field work ever undertaken.
*Tom Wolfe*

Praise for Don't Sleep, There are Snakes:
'A worldwide bestseller that finds no competition from linguistic researchers.
*New Scientist*

A remarkable book. It is written with an immediacy even a Piraha might envy, and its conjunction of physical and intellectual adventure is irresistible.
*Sunday Times*