Books by Ross Perlin
“This book is very fluently written and very engaging. What he’s concerned about are minority or endangered languages. He says that there are around 7000 languages spoken across the world, but only 4% of the world’s population speaks 96% of those…What he focuses on is New York City because, as he says, one out of 10 of every language on the planet is being spoken at some time in the city, which is phenomenal…One of the very striking things he does is visit what he calls ‘vertical villages’ in Brooklyn. There’s one city block where practically everyone in it speaks Seke, a threatened Tibeto-Burman language from the Himalayas. It’s spoken in only two villages, which are under threat because they’re on the border.” Read more...
The 2024 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding
Charles Tripp, Political Scientist
Interviews where books by Ross Perlin were recommended
-
1
Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
by Ed Conway -
2
Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories
by Amitav Ghosh -
3
The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers
by Kate Kitagawa & Timothy Revell -
4
Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare
by Annabel Sowemimo -
5
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues
by Ross Perlin -
6
The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492
by Marcy Norton
The 2024 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, recommended by Charles Tripp
The 2024 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, recommended by Charles Tripp
The British Academy Book Prize is awarded annually for a nonfiction book that combines rigorous research with engaging writing—and promotes global cultural understanding. Charles Tripp, chair of this year's judging panel, explains what that means and introduces the six books that made the 2024 shortlist.
