Watch your language

Steven Pinker is a man stuffed with thoughts and gifted with language, a combination that has won him an unusually wide audience. In 1995, he published The Language Instinct, which was not just a best-selling Pulitzer Prize nominee. It was a best-selling Pulitzer Prize nominee about linguistics that was the first really meaty guide to how language actually works. Three similarly successful books followed. In one more about linguistics and two about human nature, Pinker gradually emerged as a polymath pioneer in the field of evolutionary psychology, which plenty of scientists had dismissed as mere storytelling but has thrived, thanks largely to his efforts. His latest book completes two arcs, one for the language books and one for the psychology books. There's more stuff than ever in The Stuff of Thought, and once again, Pinker isn't shy. In devoting almost 500 pages to the way we make meaning, he confirms his place as the lead interpreter of a field long dominated by Noam Chomsky. He does it with signature clarity.

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