The Story of English by Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil, and William Cran

The not-too-dense book from roughly 400 AD to today. We follow the ever-changing ways of the world's top language across every continent -except of course Antartica- from the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England to the Norman conquest to American English, down to the Caribbean creole, across the Atlantic for African pidgin and Krio, then down to the Aussie Aboriginal English. We hear of Japlish, Franglais, and Singlish. Perhaps in another one hundred years the whole world will be English, or maybe it will be remembered as Latin- useful, but mostly dead.

Very interesting. Liked the bits about creole and the Celts and the Australians- I always like Celts, creole is neat to listen to, and the Aussies despise English spellings- but only most of the time. I regard it as amazing that about sixteen hundred years can be packed into one reasonably sized book.
Jessie/Tonks- numerous people have mentioned as I was reading this that you like this kind of thing. Let's talk.