This book explores the vital part which women have played in preserving a linguistics based on the reality and experience of language; bringing to light a much neglected perspective for those working in linguistics.

Important and celebrated economist Leland Yeager is one of the architects of the 'Virginia School' of political economy that has produced two Nobel laureates (James Buchanan and Ronald Coase) and the Public Choice movement. A number of top class contributors have here been brought together to produce a festschrift in Yeager’s honor – edited by Roger Koppl, and including the aforementioned Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, David Colander, Deirdre McCloskey and Roger Garrison.

In this international thriller from the author of Epitaph for a Spy, a freelance writer is offered a deadly job he can’t refuse. Robert Halliday is an ordinary writer-for-hire until he receives a bomb threat in the mail. When the bomb arrives as promised, it is accompanied by an offer of employment from international fixer Karliss Zander. Unless Halliday agrees to help him edit the memoirs of a nineteenth-century Russian terrorist, Zander will detonate the bomb. Preferring not to test Zander’s resolve, Halliday takes the job. But he soon discovers his new employer requires more than his eye for grammar and punctuation. Tangled in an international web of danger, Halliday begins to wonder if he’d have been better off letting the bomb explode.

The problems of international communication and linguistic rights are recurring debates in the present-day age of globalization. But the debate truly began over a hundred years ago, when the increasingly interconnected world of the nineteenth century fostered a desire for the development of a global lingua franca. Many individuals and social movements competed to create an artificial language unencumbered by the political rivalries that accompanied English, German, and French. Organizations including the American Philosophical Society, the International Association of Academies, the International Peace Bureau, the Comintern, and the League of Nations intervened in the debate about the possibility of an artificial language, but of the numerous tongues created before World War II, only Esperanto survives today. Esperanto and Its Rivals sheds light on the factors that led almost all artificial languages to fail and helped English to prevail as the global tongue of the twenty-first century. Exploring the social and political contexts of the three most prominent artificial languages—Volapük, Esperanto, and Ido—Roberto Garvía examines the roles played by social movement leaders and inventors, the strategies different organizations used to lobby for each language, and other early decisions that shaped how those languages spread and evolved. Through the rise and fall of these artificial languages, Esperanto and Its Rivals reveals the intellectual dilemmas and political anxieties that troubled the globalizing world at the turn of the twentieth century.

This fascinating book takes invented languages and explores the origins, purpose, and usage of these curious artefacts of culture. Written by experts in the field, chapters discuss a wide range of languages - from Esperanto to Klingon - and uncover the motives behind their creation and the outcomes of their existence.