Thursday, April 16, 2009

Best books: Steven Johnson

At The Week, author Steven Johnson recommended six books about scientific breakthroughs.

One title on the list:
The First Word by Christine Kenneally (Penguin, $16).

Kenneally’s 2007 book is the story of modern linguistics. Its account of Noam Chomsky’s breakthrough work on generative grammar—and the controversy it sparked—is ­riveting intellectual history, as is the explanation of Chomsky’s strange resistance to Darwinian explanations of our “language instinct.”
Read about another title on Johnson's list.

The Page 99 Test: The First Word.

--Marshal Zeringue