Rating: 
Summary: Still the best intro
Review: I came to this book as a result of reading evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond's book, The Third Chimpanzee. The Horses, Hittites, and History chapter in Diamond's book discusses the several main theories for the origin of the proto-Indo-Europeans, and cites this as a major reference and source for this chapter. Since I like to go to the horse's (or Hittite's) mouth myself, following up on Diamond's dicussion of the importance of the book in his bibliography, I thought I'd check out the original book.For those wanting a more complete exposition of the proto-Indo-European theory, this book is probably still the best one out there on the subject. Although now almost 20 years old, it's still a well-written, detailed account, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone wanting a better understanding of this area of history. Actually, you could just read the 26-page chapter in Diamond's book first, and then see if you want more detailed information. Diamond himself used both the present book and many others to write the chapter in his book, so it represents a good summary of present scholarship in the area. For those of you who want more books on the subject, I mention some of these below, which Diamond also cites in his bibliography. I would follow the above up with Cavalli-Sforza's book discussing his fascinating data showing the relationship between dozens of genetic markers and their current geographical distribution and presence, or lack of them, in the different peoples in Europe, and what this shows about their origins, since this adds a further dimension to the PIE hypothesis. Sforza also discusses the genetic data for peoples outside of Europe, such as Polynesians and Australasians, but I found his conclusions about Europe, since they're relevant to the PIE question, the most interesting. In addition to the above two books, the other most important recent book on this subject is Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and Language; also important are older but still useful books by George Cardona, Indo-European and Indo-Europeans; Indo-European Language and Society, by Emile Benveniste; The Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and Third Millenia, by Edgar Polome; Ancient Indo-European Dialects, by Birnbaum and Puhvel; Indo-European Philology, by W.B. Lockwood, and The Distribution of Indo-European Root Morphemes, by Norman Bird, which also came out somewhat later, around the time of Renfrew and Mallory's books. And for those who really want to go to the horse's mouth, so to speak, there is also the Journal of Indo-European Studies, for those with a true scholarly bent (or masochistic bent, as the case may be, which probably includes me, since I've read a lot of academic journals in my life). Interestingly enough, Cavalli-Sforza's research shows an origin for PIE in Anatolia, or what is modern Turkey. This is not that far off from the supposed origin of the proto-Indo-Europeans in the area north of the Caspian and Black Seas, but does push it further south. Overall, a well-done discussion of a fascinating area of ancient history and archaeology for someone wanting a good introduction and grounding in the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: I know it's not a perfect book but I liked it a lot.
Review: I love languages but I never had the chance to take a course on the fascinating topic of the Indo-european language family and its early speakers. I think this book is wonderful for those who wants to know more about it, and a good beggining to read more and draw his or her own conclussions.
Rating: 
Summary: ACADEMICALLY QUALIFIED REVIEWER
Review: I will pose one question/thesis to all who read and/or review this book, including those with minimal as well as high qualifications in linguistics and related subjects relevant to understanding the inter-relationship of the Indo-European languages: As a minimal qualification for understanding this relationship and being able to write about it, what is required? It is my opinion as well as that of many others qualified in the field, that one must possess, at a very minimum, complete fluency in and a thorough knowledge of the grammar of: 1) Sanskrit. 2) The older (Homeric) Greek. 3) Latin. 4) One or two of the Germanic languages, preferably today's German and English (or more preferably, Anglo-Saxon (Old English)). 5) One of the Slavic languages. 6) One of the Baltic languages (Latvian or Lithuanian). 7) One of the Indo-European-base languages of India (preferably Hindi). That's the equivalent of taking a course in Indo-European 101, without which one is simply not qualified to write on the subject. And it is quite evident from a reading of this book that the author does not possess this minimum qualification. (Needless to say, this reviewer does possess this qualification, and more.) And if one does have this minimal qualification, one cannot but come to the conclusion, upon a review of the above languages, that one of the languages in the above list is the parent of all the others. And not just a parent, but a parent which is infinitely more complex and highly structured than any of its descendants. The proof is irrefutable, as irrefutable as mathematical equations (in fact, some of the grammatical relations are very much like mathematical equations). That is the inescapable conclusion the very first reviewers of these languages came to in the 18th and 19th centuries (who needless to say possessed much better scholarship than today's linguists), and their views held sway until, suddenly at one point in time, their views became politically incorrect. Among other inescapable conclusions one would come to (e.g. from the overwhelming presence of the dual number in the root language and in no other language, and its extreme inflectional character), are that the people who spoke this root language were linguistically isolated for thousands of years before something suddenly caused them to move. And without taking into consideration this fundamental fact, one cannot write about the presumed geographic or other origins of the root Indo-Europeans. Today, truth has been turned on its head in virtually all publications on this subject, and the authors of all and sundry works thereon are confident in the knowledge that they are safe because nearly all their readers are even more ignorant and unqualified than they. And the very few qualified readers shake their heads in dismay. Today, one dare not use the words "Aryan" or "root language" without immediately being branded a racist, even if one emphasizes that "Aryan" today has about as much relevance as "Tyrannosaurus rex", both being long extinct. Though I can write reams more on the subject, I'll conclude here. Basically, what I'm saying is that the basis and thesis of the book is fundamentally unsound, not unlike many other books on the subject by unqualified authors. In other words, it's garbage.
Rating:
Summary: A useful introduction to IE applications, with some failings
Review: IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS is essential reading for those interested in the people who spoke the ancestor of most tongues of Europe and western Asia. While scholars have carefully reconstructed a proto-language, the identity of its speakers and their geographical origin remain a mystery, and J.P. Mallory shows what is currently thought in the field.
Mallory begins by tracing the historical development of European comparative linguistics, and then examines the various branches of the Indo-European language family first in Asia, then in Europe. However, the most useful portion of the book begins when Mallory attempts to reconstruct as well as one can the actual cultural and social traits of the Indo-Europeans based on the proto-language they spoke. He shows how horses must have been very important within such a culture, asserts that the people must have lived within certain geographical boundaries based on their common vocabulary, and even postulates Proto-Indo-European religious rituals. Unlike Watkin's HOW TO KILL A DRAGON, Mallory does not give much space to concepts of comparative Indo-European poetics.
The last third of Mallory's work is concerned with the Indo-European homeland problem, the eternal conundrum for those who would apply comparative linguistics to actual archaeology. Mallory favours the Russian steppes or Ukraine, as do most scholars, and argues quite well against the usual alternative theory of an Anatolian origin. I felt, however, that his placement of the Indo-Europeans could have been more substantial than it was if he had worked in more evidence of contact with speakers of the Uralic languages.
A downside of the book is that, while Mallory's entire topic is based on linguistic reconstruction, there is no passion for linguistics in this book. I was unhappy to see, for example, that while Mallory is well aware of laryngeal discoveries, he has chosen to give the older reconstructions of PIE roots in the interest of pronouncability. I don't think the benefits outweight the appearance of datedness and quaintness.
While introductions to comparative Indo-European linguistics abound, there are few volumes like IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS which apply reconstruction to substantial archeological exploration. Mallory's work should certainly be read by anyone interested in larger applications of Indo-European philology. I should note that this book should not be approached by the layman unfamiliar with comparative linguistics, and that a work like Szeremenyi's INTRODUCTION TO INDO-EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS is a necessary prequisite.
Rating:
Summary: Very good overview of PIE theory for the common person
Review: Indo-European studies, like Representation Art, was adversely affected by the Nazi endorsement of Aryan studies. Only recently has this field of study started to truly recover from this setback. It is **not** race-theory, but language theory and related folk-movements that most affect the core of the discipline. This is the best book written on the topic for a general reader. The common origins for the peoples of Europe, Iran, India is something that anyone wishes to have a good understanding of history needs to understand. Many of the particulars of history are still obscure, even to the experts of the field, but the relations between these peoples all go back in the recesses of ancient history. One of the major problems of history is a simple issue, why is it so short? Human history appears to, at best, be about 10,000 years. But the human species has been around for at least ten times that long. Why the great gap there? Indo-European studies can be seen as an attempt to push things back further into the past by studying out languages. Sanskrit and Latin have a common source, that we can see by doing comparisons, so where is the common source? And who were those people that were the common source? People want to understand who they are and this discipline is an attempt to try and understand who we are. Of course, the research and thinking on the subject is very much complicated by the interactions the Indo-European languages has with non-IE languages, and even by those interactions that sub-groups within the IE had with each other. None of these groups existed in a vacuum. Word bowering between speakers has happened throughout history, and this gives rise to many oddities. The author only mentions the concept of Nostratic once. Nostratic linguistics is a theoretical idea that tries to ascribe the arising of, more or less, all language to one development or discovery at some point in the far distant past. It is a much broader approach to the concept of the Proto-Language, in so far as it is looking for a Proto-Proto-Language or a common source to the various Proto-Languages. It has a certain appeal to me because it seems to make sense on a very theoretical level. The reason the good author avoids more than page length of discussion to the idea is that it is very, very, very theoretical. There is very little real evidence going for the Nostratic concept. Of course, science - even social ones like linguistics - must confine themselves to the evidence. Nostratic is thinking of things outside the box though, and can be helpful to think like that at times as long as one sees it as a useful exercise and not as a replacement for real scientific thinking. All in all, this is a good book and I like it.
Rating:
Summary: Very good overview of PIE theory for the common person
Review: Indo-European studies, like Representation Art, was adversely affected by the Nazi endorsement of Aryan studies. Only recently has this field of study started to truly recover from this setback. It is **not** race-theory, but language theory and related folk-movements that most affect the core of the discipline. This is the best book written on the topic for a general reader. The common origins for the peoples of Europe, Iran, India is something that anyone wishes to have a good understanding of history needs to understand. Many of the particulars of history are still obscure, even to the experts of the field, but the relations between these peoples all go back in the recesses of ancient history. One of the major problems of history is a simple issue, why is it so short? Human history appears to, at best, be about 10,000 years. But the human species has been around for at least ten times that long. Why the great gap there? Indo-European studies can be seen as an attempt to push things back further into the past by studying out languages. Sanskrit and Latin have a common source, that we can see by doing comparisons, so where is the common source? And who were those people that were the common source? People want to understand who they are and this discipline is an attempt to try and understand who we are. Of course, the research and thinking on the subject is very much complicated by the interactions the Indo-European languages has with non-IE languages, and even by those interactions that sub-groups within the IE had with each other. None of these groups existed in a vacuum. Word bowering between speakers has happened throughout history, and this gives rise to many oddities. The author only mentions the concept of Nostratic once. Nostratic linguistics is a theoretical idea that tries to ascribe the arising of, more or less, all language to one development or discovery at some point in the far distant past. It is a much broader approach to the concept of the Proto-Language, in so far as it is looking for a Proto-Proto-Language or a common source to the various Proto-Languages. It has a certain appeal to me because it seems to make sense on a very theoretical level. The reason the good author avoids more than page length of discussion to the idea is that it is very, very, very theoretical. There is very little real evidence going for the Nostratic concept. Of course, science - even social ones like linguistics - must confine themselves to the evidence. Nostratic is thinking of things outside the box though, and can be helpful to think like that at times as long as one sees it as a useful exercise and not as a replacement for real scientific thinking. All in all, this is a good book and I like it.
Rating:
Summary: A little dated, but still an excellent introduction
Review: Past racist misuse of the term "Aryan" notwithstanding, there is no more copiously documented and supported thesis in historical linguistics than the Indo-European hypothesis, with over 200 years of scholarship to back it up. Although this work was published before human genetic data published by Cavalli-Sforza which tantalizingly suggested an Anatolian origin for the Indo-European peoples, this book is an honest, well-informed introduction to the problem of Indo-European origins. The unfavorable reviews on this page astound me by their pettiness and ignorance, and I have to conclude that they simply have an unscientific, ideological objection to the concept of a Proto-Indo-European language or a people that spoke it, based on the silly notion that such a hypothesis is "racist."
Rating:
Summary: the best general survey around
Review: the cover to this book,is mind blowingly gorgious. and the book isn't bad either. its the best general survey out there and the price is awesome right now. some people criticize it because the latter half was such a large emphasise on the archeological hunt, but this is the future of the field and the one that will ultimately help consolidate the different schools. for a more indepth book that I think is still very engaging or at least a good recource is the authors 'encyclopedia of indo-european culture'. for a much smaller reference try the 'american heritage dictionary of indo-european roots'
Rating:
Summary: A Fine Survey
Review: The hostility towards this book is amazing. The premise is very simple. With scattered exceptions, all European languages, as well as the languages of North India and Persia, show much common ground, not only in terms of vocabulary similarities (pater/father/Vater/etc.) but also the declension of nouns and the conjugation of verbs. For over 200 years, linguists have attempted to demonstrate NOT that the linkage exists, because it is self-evident that it does, but rather to try and explain how these separate languages split off from each other. The baseline is the hypothesis that all speakers of this language group began with a common language, reconstructed as Proto Indo European to about 6000 BCE. Once we get to that point, then the question becomes, who were these people and where did they come from? The book summarizes a very large literature with remarkable fairness. The earlier parts of the book concerning the linguistic aspects are probably the most direct for the person who comes to this topic for the first time, as say e.g. through the American Heritage Dictionary. The geographic arguments involve a lot of special pleading and tend to be inconclusive. Still, Mallory is much more balanced than Renfrew. The archaeological arguments tend to be a little dense. Still, this is the best beginning survey I know to the subject because it approaches the problem as a problem of historical reconstruction, and shows the growth of the linguistic understanding also from a historical point of view. Hence it can be quite fascinating and even exciting. People who have a knee jerk rejection to the idea of "Aryans" or "Indo Europeans" really should understand that there is a difference between attempting to understand the perplexing similarity of these languages as opposed to the manifold attempts to appropriate history for ideological purposes. This book has nothing to do with the latter. Although the latter has a lot to do with the criticisms of this field and this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Language not People
Review: This is a book tracing the relationships of Indo-European languages to a common ancestral root. Don't be fooled by a general synopsis or the headlining title into thinking it's about people as I had been. Although it does from time to time trace the history and origins of its speakers, the book most focuses on relationships between Latin, Tocharian, Irish, English and so forth. However, I still found it pretty worthwhile, because I do take an interest in language and culture. The book is a bit outdated by now, but has lots of good graphs and illustrations throughout. I was dissappointed, because I was looking for something more anthropological rather than linguistic or archeological. Therefore, it would be five, even though it's kind of old.
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