The Writing Systems of the World (Language Library)

Rating:
Summary: Very good. Better edited.
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. It was fascinating, and unlike "Reading the Past" (also very good), the information on various language families and regions of the world is interconnected.
My only criticism is that the book is in bad need of an editor. While Coulmas presents a great deal of information, he has a rather noteable tendancy of belabouring a point and rambling on and on. (He beats dead horses well past death and decomposition.) The untranslated quotes in French are a bit frustrating, and his penchant for quoting Greek seems a bit overdone. The book could easily be edited to two-thirds its size and not loose a single jewel of information.

Rating:
Summary: excellent introduction to writing systems
Review: The book details the origins of the world's writing systems and traces their development to the present day. The central relationship is set between the written and the spoken word, and poses hypothetical scenarios of the way in which writing has affected human language. While describing his views on why the Chinese pictogram, a seemingly 3000 year-old cumbersome system, is in fact very useful, the author also ranges over the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Near Eastern cuniforms and Semitic, Classical and Indo-European writing systems. The book offers many black and white drawings and illustrations.This is a highly recommended book for all, but especially those with interest in linguistics and the history, evolution and importance of writing.