It was a gorgeous weekend in Boston, and while getting what will probably be one of my last glimpses of the snow this winter I listened to books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was "Tacit Racism" by Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck. This book focuses on how social expectations and conversational dynamics build on top of institutional racism to lead to even greater anti-Black bias. Warfield Rawls and Duck combine deep, painful analyses of racist interactions and rich interview data to paint a troubling picture of the current environment in the US, but also present some fairly straightforward ways to combat this seemingly intractable issue. I think this book could have been better by either focusing exclusively on anti-Black racism (which is ~95% of the content anyway) or expanding the aperture to cover more groups and go beyond the modern period. Their thesis also gets muddled when they fail to distinguish between different classes of racism, as some sections focus on what I would consider to be pretty clearly institutional or overt racism. That being said, this is still a unique, important analysis of an important facet of modern US society. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo50271277.html

Next was "Ancient Writing and the History of the Alphabet" by John McWhorter. This series of lectures is extremely enjoyable, with McWhorter cracking jokes throughout this methodical examination of the history of the modern English alphabet. He starts at the beginning of writing itself, then works through different classes of writing and eventually early alphabets before finally deconstructing the roots of each letter of the English alphabet. What emerges is how this fascinating invention was driven by intellectual and technical advancements (e.g. why "w" is called "double u" in English and "double v" in Spanish) as well as the diffusion of ideas and people. Highly recommend https://shop.thegreatcourses.com/ancient-writing-and-the-history-of-the-alphabet

Next was "Language Families of the World" by John McWhorter. McWhorter provides his characteristic wit and deep linguistic expertise to this compelling tour through the language groups of the world, exploring what makes them unique and what explains their current geographic configuration. If you have some linguistics background much of this will be familiar, but by covering literally every extant language the depth here is extraordinary, and one gains a deeper understanding for language diffusion processes and the sheer diversity that human languages can exhibit. As a totally minor quibble, one of McWhorter's Japanese examples is incorrect (although they do illustrate his point, he says "meet" in Japanese but he says the translation is "see"). Highly recommend https://shop.thegreatcourses.com/language-families-of-the-world

Last was "The Story of Human Language" by John McWhorter. This is an essential introductory series of lectures to the nature of human language - its development, evolutionary processes, and forms. I'd recommend this as your first stop before picking up other work by McWhorter, as this covers the basics at a level that are expanded on in his lectures on language families and alphabets. The lectures on language mixing are especially fascinating, but as should be expected the entire series is a gem. Highly recommend https://shop.thegreatcourses.com/the-story-of-human-language