"Vastly informative and vastly entertaining...A scholarly and fascinating book." —Los Angeles Times

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language.

From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson explores English grammar and word origins as he tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

What makes the English language so maddening—and so endlessly fascinating?