false 57479 0 0 1591868 1861890516 9781861890511 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185577551m/1591868.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1591868.History_of_Language 3.75 4
"[a] delightful and unexpectedly accessible book ... a virtuoso tour of the linguistic world."—The Economist

"... few who read this remarkable study will regard language in quite the same way again."—The Good Book Guide</div>]]> 57479 3.53 15 4 436763 0333949765 9780333949764 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174763193m/436763.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/436763.A_History_of_the_Pacific_Islands 4.00 2 57479 3.53 15 4 99739 1861892829 9781861892829 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171451931m/99739.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99739.Island_at_the_End_of_the_World_The_Turbulent_History_of_Easter_Island 4.00 2 Island at the End of the World, a fascinating chronicle of adversity, triumph, and the enduring monumentality of the island's stone guards.

A small canoe with Polynesians brought the first humans to Easter Island in 700 CE, and when boat travel in the South Pacific drastically decreased around 1500, the Easter Islanders were forced to adapt in order to survive their isolation. Adaptation, Fischer asserts, was a continuous thread in the life of Easter Island: the first European visitors, who viewed the awe-inspiring monolithic busts in 1722, set off hundreds of years of violent warfare, trade, and disease—from the smallpox, wars, and Great Death that decimated the island to the late nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries who tried to "save" it to a despotic Frenchman who declared sole claim of the island and was soon killed by the remaining 111 islanders. The rituals, leaders, and religions of the Easter Islanders evolved with all of these events, and Fischer is just as attentive to the island's cultural developments as he is to its foreign invasions.

Bringing his history into the modern era, Fischer examines the colonization and annexation of Easter Island by Chile, including the Rapanui people's push for civil rights in 1964 and 1965, by which they gained full citizenship and freedom of movement on the island. As travel to and interest in the island rapidly expand, Island at the End of the World is an essential history of this mysterious site.</DIV>]]> 57479 3.53 15 4 2054297 1861891679 9781861891679 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2054297.History_of_Writing 2.50 2 A History of Writing offers a fascinating investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world.Commencing with the first stages of information storage, Fischer focuses on the emergence of complete writing systems in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. He documents the rise of Phoenician and its effect on the Greek alphabet, generating the many alphabetic scripts of the West. Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese writing systems are dealt with in depth, as is writing in pre-Columbian America. Also explored are Western Europe's medieval manuscripts and the history of printing, leading to the innovations in technology and spelling rules of the 19th and 20th centuries.</div>]]> 57479 3.53 15 4 232729 1861892098 9781861892096 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172950710m/232729.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/232729.History_of_Reading 4.00 1 57479 3.53 15 4 4181604 1861891601 9781861891600 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4181604.A_History_of_Reading 0.0 0 Reading started in ancient Asia and the Americas, re-emerged in Europe in the Middle Ages and was reinvented by the development of printing. The explosion of the book trade, of newspapers, public readings and public libraries swept reading into 19th century educational reforms and onwards towards the present cyber-age, in which read communication looks set to exceed oral communication. This highly innovative account, the last in Fischer's trilogy, is a complete history of a ubiquitous yet mysterious art.

]]> 57479 3.53 15 4 3243739 900000568X 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3243739.A_History_of_Language_A_History_of_Writing_A_History_of_Reading 0.0 0 57479 3.53 15 4 3073444 3423340304 9783423340304 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3073444.Eine_kleine_Geschichte_der_Sprache 0.0 0 57479 3.53 15 4 809416 3593366673 9783593366678 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178582589m/809416.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/809416.Eine_kleine_Geschichte_der_Sprache_ 0.0 0 57479 3.53 15 4 809415 8420655015 9788420655017 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/809415.Breve_Historia_Del_Lenguaje_Brief_History_of_Language 0.0 0 57479 3.53 15 4