The Kingdom Of Speech - Hardcover

Praise for The Kingdom of Speech:

"The author's own prose is, as ever, a marvelous mix of gleeful energy and whip-around-the-neck control, and his book is a gas to read."
--Charles C. Mann, Wall Street Journal


"This being Tom Wolfe, the ponderous debate over language and evolution takes on a kind of pop-art pizzazz....A curiously entertaining little book."
--James Sullivan, Boston Globe


"Mr. Wolfe, now 85, shows no sign of mellowing. His new book, The Kingdom of Speech, is his boldest bit of dueling yet. It's a whooping, joy-filled and hyperbolic raid on, of all things, the theory of evolution....a provocation rather than a dissertation. The sound it makes is that of a lively mind having a very good time, and enjoying the scent of its own cold-brewed napalm in the morning."
--Dwight Garner, New York Times


"In lively, irreverent, and witty prose, Wolfe argues that speech, not evolution, sets humans apart from animals and is responsible for all of humankind's complex achievements....Wolfe's vibrant study manages to be clever, funny, serious, satirical, and instructive."--Publishers Weekly

"Wolfe, still a master at using language, is another claimant for the throne. The Kingdom of Speech is best read, then, with Wolfe not just as a narrator-historian but as a character. One who, after critiquing theorists who rule from insulated rooms, depicts himself in that exact setting for his book's final vision."
--Nate Hopper, Time

"Stimulating, clever and witty, Wolfe's little book is sure to provoke discussion about the role language plays in making us human."
--Henry L. Carrigan Jr., BookPage

"An entertaining and informative romp, thanks to Wolfe's patented stylistic hijinks. It may raise more questions than it answers, but that may well be its greatest virtue....very funny."
--Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer


"Head-hopping nonfiction....slick narrative storytelling alongside heaps of documentary evidence."--Mark Lundy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


"Linguistics is famously boring, but Tom Wolfe is fun....beautifully written."
--Chris Knight, Counterpunch

If you thought every question pertaining to evolution has been solved, think again: Wolfe explains in his typically high-energy prose how the development of speech is still an area in which science has far more questions than answers."
--New York Post

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.