Judith Tolchin

I bought this book expecting to discover the reasons that the English language has gained such immense popularity all over the world, but I am now about 2/3 of the way through it, and am still looking for the answer to that question. The book is very episodic and not coherently written. It tends to focus on anecdotes and miscellaneous quotes from people who are not language historians. It takes detours to tell about the history of Scots and Irish, and of Black English. There is no “through line” which shows a growing appetite among the world’s population for a “lingua franca” which turns out to be English. I gave up on it more than once as a waste of my time, but kept returning to it, hoping ultimately to find what I was looking for. Alas, I’m afraid I’ll arrive at the last page to find that this book was a huge disappointment!