Fascinating, well-researched book. In Proto, author Laura Spinney (with assists from the various other academicians she mentions by name throughout) takes a sweeping, multidisciplinary approach to historical linguistics, attempting to trace the origin, spread, and evolution of the vast Indo-European language family from its ancient beginnings through to modern times. Because of the sometimes meandering nature of the writing -- and the topic itself -- I occasionally had a hard time keeping track of which bits are solid fact (such as DNA analysis of human remains from different archaeological sites), which bits are widely-accepted points of agreement, and which bits are still mainly theoretical, but I was thoroughly engrossed and learned things I never knew I needed to know about the history of Eurasia. I've been both entertained and educated!

Are you looking for your next thought provoking read? Check out Proto by Laura Spinney. It makes you think.

It's been a long (long) time since I took a linguistics course, and it was interesting to read a book about the current multidisciplinary approaches to tracing the history of Proto-Indo-European. The connections between linguistics, archeology, and genetics are really cool to read about. The book is engaging and accessible enough for an interested lay reader, although I can't speak to how well or accurately Spinney explains the current state of the field. The hypotheses Spinney describes for relationships between and among various ancient and modern languages are fascinating.

That said, I desperately wished for some visuals—maps, a timeline, something to hang my understanding on other than the convoluted migrations and changes Spinney describes. At times, the writing seems to jump from topic to topic and location to location in a way that left me unsure of where we were geographically, temporally, or culturally. I also found myself wishing Spinney had spent more time talking about the researchers she spoke with—who are the people tracing these histories? What are their stories? That's a bit outside the scope of the book, but it might have humanized some of the research further.

I gave this review copy a good-faith try, but I had to give up. The author interrogates nothing in the fields she's reporting on; she just repeats likely sounding stories and tidbits as if they were reliable scientific findings. No anecdote is too good not to include. In addition, for a book on language, the writing is surprisingly awkward.

Linguistics is an endlessly fascinating topic, and deserves a writer who can really grapple with the material. Spinney is not that author.

This is an excellent book about a topic not too many people think about. In its own way it was very reflective. It made me give thoughts I would never have otherwise.