Life and Language Beyond Earth

Language and linguistics

About

Have you ever wondered whether we are alone in the universe, or if lifeforms on other planets might exist? If they do exist, how might their languages have evolved? Could we ever understand them, and indeed learn to communicate with them? This highly original, thought-provoking book takes us on an electrifying journey over billions of years, from the formation of galaxies and solar systems, to the appearance of planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars, and then to how biology and, ultimately, human life arose on our own planet. It delves into how our brains and our language developed, in order to explore the likelihood of communication beyond Earth and whether it would evolve along similar lines. In the process, fascinating insights from the fields of astronomy, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience and linguistics are uncovered, shedding new light on life as we know it on Earth, and beyond.

Key Features

• Explores how human life and language evolved on our own planet in order to analyse the likelihood of life and language beyond Earth

• Considers the likelihood of intelligent beings existing on planetary systems beyond our Earth and considers how they might have evolved, developed societies, and built civilisations

About the Author

Raymond Hickey is Adjunct Professor at the University of Limerick, Ireland and former Professor at the University of Duisburg and Essen, Germany. His main research interests are varieties of English, language contact, variation and change and issues in phonology. Some of his recent publications include Listening to the Past (2017), The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics (2017), English in Multilingual South Africa (2020) and The Handbook of Language Contact (2020).

9781009257275

Hardback

AUD $53.99 / NZD $57.99

Available November 2023

Donald Stoker, National Defense University

Key Features

• Identifies how the US has used its power throughout its history and for what purposes

• llustrates pitfalls that current leaders should avoid when making decisions on political aims and grand strategy

• Covers America’s aims and strategies in each of its wars

About the Author

History

About

Across the full span of the nation’s history, Donald Stoker challenges our understanding of the purposes and uses of American power. From the struggle for independence to the era of renewed competition with China and Russia, he reveals the grand strategies underpinning the nation’s pursuit of sovereignty, security, expansion, and democracy abroad. He shows how successive administrations have projected diplomatic, military, and economic power, and mobilized ideas and information to preserve American freedoms at home and secure US aims abroad. He exposes the myth of American isolationism, the good and ill of America’s quest for democracy overseas, and how too often its administrations have lacked clear political aims or a concrete vision for where they want to go. Understanding this history is vital if America is to relearn how to use its power to meet the challenges ahead and to think more clearly about political aims and grand strategy.

Advance praise

‘Purpose and Power is the most comprehensive and complete discussion of America’s grand strategy that has been published. Donald Stoker has provided historians and scholars of international relations with a provocative and insightful examination of two centuries of American thinking about its role in the world. This book is likely to become an instant classic in the field.’

Thomas Schwartz, author of Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography

Donald Stoker is Professor of National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School in Washington, DC. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including The Grand Design: Strategy and the US Civil War, 1861–1865 (2010), winner of the Fletcher Pratt award, and Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present (2022).

9781108490931

Hardback

AUD $47.95 / NZD $51.95

Available October 2023

Jacob L. Wright, Emory University