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Rating: 
Summary: Very useful overview - not very in-depth, though
Review: Each of the 19 sections of this book covers a different tongue, extinct or existing. Usually about 10 pages are spent per language. There are plenty of maps, for use in placing the exact distribution of whatever language you are reading about. Also, there are decent bibliographies at the end of each article, providing a range of from about 3 to about 20 reference sources you could go to for further research. This is why I gave this work five stars -- I don't think the editor was aiming to provide an absolutely comprehensive overview of all these languages, as, of course, would be impossible. He tells us enough to whet our appetite, and to provoke a certain amount of wonder, and then he tells us where we could go to read more, if we want... For me, the most interesting parts of this book are the little articles Glanville Price included about Flemish surviving as a spoken tongue in some parts of Wales, due to some Flemish knights settling there in the Middle Ages, and the articles about lesser-known Celtic tongues which survived almost to the present... As it says in the blurb Amazon.com provides, the primary focii of these articles are historical, diachronic, and sociolinguistic. I bought this book, and I'm pleased that I did. I recommend it to anyone.
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