The Kingdom of Speech
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. "A whooping, joy-filled and hyperbolic raid on, of all things, the theory of evolution." (Dwight Garner, New York Times) Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a captivating, 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 the Kingdom of Speech.
Reviews with the most likes.
Even though the book is only 160+ pages, it's padded. Wolfe goes into various alleys, ,like explaining the cosmogonies of specific peoples or details of Everett's sojourns in the Amazon that have nothing to do with his thesis; namely, evolution is incapable of explaining speech. His final paean to the power of speech is way overblown.
