The enthralling story of how today's largest language family, spoken by nearly half the world's population, descended from one ancient dialect.
Laura Spinney is the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and two novels. Her science writing has appeared in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Nature, The Economist, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She lives in Paris.