The Life of a Language

Whether you're a native speaker or far from fluent, you'll find that these recent books on the English language — its history, use and abuse — will entertain and instruct:

The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language . Melvyn Bragg's engrossing tale of the evolution of the language of Shakespeare, from its origins as a minor Germanic dialect to 21st century ubiquity.

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Simon Winchester serves...