What can you say after you say that the world--or at least human life on it--looks like it's nearing its end? How about starting with wonder at the possibility that dialogue and subjectivity--the bases of human language--are possible now? In Time and Human Language Now two lifelong friends share, in the form of a long-distance e-mail correspondence, a conversation about the relation between cosmos and consciousness, and about the possibility of being responsibly open toward the future without either despair or unreasoning hope. The urgency that underlies this dialogue is the conviction that there can only be reason for hope if the members of homo sapiens can learn--soon--how vital and astonishing is the phenomenon of shared human presence through language.

The accompanying DVD provides some glimpses of the practice of music in a variety of cultures and illustrates ways of listening to the human voice that reveal its intrinsic musicality. The DVD was edited by Pedro Espi-Sanchis, who recorded further material in South Africa.

Written by a Stanford- and Harvard-trained historian, Humans: The Story of Our Past, The Challenge to Our Future reveals that historical change has been accelerating from one period of human existence to the next, suggesting that we must move beyond organizing at the nation-state level to adopt a global, species-wide perspective. Ted Farmer, who taught history at the University of Minnesota, organized the Center for Early Modern History and a Center for Global Studies, and initiated a comparative world history course sequence and an interdisciplinary global studies major, has spent decades studying how what we were has had a direct impact on who we are. Rejecting a Western or Eurocentric lens on history, in Humans, he identifies six distinct periods of human connection, from vast geographic, cultural, and racial separation to great social, economic, and cultural convergence. Uniquely, Humans shows how, at each stage in history, humans created new modes of understanding, such as mythology, theology, and science, that now coexist in our present and complicate our effort to make sense of reality. Accessible to the curious casual reader yet meaty enough for college-level history instructors, Humans will help readers make sense of our situation: that we are faced with a looming global disaster unless we act in concert.

An accessible exploration of a burgeoning new field: the incredible evolution of language The first popular book to recount the exciting, very recent developments in tracing the origins of language, The First Word is at the forefront of a controversial, compelling new field. Acclaimed science writer Christine Kenneally explains how a relatively small group of scientists that include Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker assembled the astounding narrative of how the fundamental process of evolution produced a linguistic ape-in other words, us. Infused with the wonder of discovery, this vital and engrossing book offers us all a better understanding of the story of humankind.

The volume presents an essential selection collected from the essays of Wolfgang Klein. In addition to journal and book articles, many of them published by Mouton, this book features new and unpublished texts by the author. It focuses, among other topics, on information structure, the expression of grammatical categories and the structure of learner varieties.

Breaking through the boundaries of traditional psycholinguistics texts, The Psychology of Language: An Integrated Approach, by David Ludden, takes an integrated, cross-cultural approach that weaves the latest developmental and neuroscience research into every chapter. Separate chapters on bilingualism and sign language and integrated coverage of the social aspects of language acquisition and language use provide a breadth of coverage not found in other texts. In addition, rich pedagogy in every chapter and an engaging conversational writing style help students understand the connections between core psycholinguistic material and findings from across the psychological sciences.