The kingdom of speech
"Taking readers on a rollicking ride through history, a master storyteller and reporter, whose legend began in journalism, presents a paradigm-shifting argument that speech, not evolution, is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements"--NoveList.
| Main Author: | Wolfe, Tom (Author) |
|---|---|
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Little, Brown and Company,
2016.
|
| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
"Taking readers on a rollicking ride through history, a master storyteller and reporter, whose legend began in journalism, presents a paradigm-shifting argument that speech, not evolution, is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements"--NoveList. "Before Tom Wolfe was a bestselling novelist, he was a groundbreaking journalist. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of his own most important tool: language. In The Kingdom of Speech, Wolfe makes the captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech--not evolution--is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. From Alfred Russel Wallace, the self-taught Englishman who beat Charles Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it for its inability to explain human speech, to the neo-Darwinists, who for years argued that there is a language 'organ' in the human brain, Wolfe examines how science has repeatedly tried and failed to account for man's gift of gab. Flash forward to the present day and the controversial work of another outsider, anthropologist Daniel Everett. After thirty years of studying a tribe isolated deep in the jungles of the Amazon, Everett revealed a people whose prehistoric level of speech had led to a society without religion, ceremonies, hierarchies, marriage, or ornaments, and without the ability to plan ahead or to consider a past beyond personal lifetimes, thus defying the current wisdom that language is hardwired in humans. With trenchant wit and uproarious humor, Wolfe cracks open the secretive, solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zigzags of Darwinism, both old and neo-, and he shows the endless importance of the courageous outsider in overturning our most cherished ideas about ourselves. Provocative and fast-paced, Wolfe's latest tour de force will have everyone talking."--Dust jacket. |
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| Physical Description: |
185 pages ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 170-185). |
| ISBN: |
9780316404624 0316404624 |
| Author Notes: |
His first book, a collection of articles about the flamboyant Sixties written for New York and Esquire entitled The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, was published in 1968. His other collections included Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and Hooking Up. His non-fiction works included The Pump House Gang; The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; The Painted Word; Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine; In Our Time; and From Bauhaus to Our House. The Right Stuff won the American Book Award for nonfiction, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Harold Vursell Award for prose style, and the Columbia Journalism Award. It was adapted into a film in 1983. His fiction books included The Bonfire of the Vanities, Ambush at Fort Bragg, A Man in Full, The Kingdom of Speech, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and Back to Blood. He was also a contributing artist at Harper's from 1978 to 1981. Many of his illustrations were collected in In Our Time. He died on May 14, 2018 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) |