“The Critic’s Notebook,” by the Editors

“The Critic’s Notebook,” by the Editors

Nonfiction: Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney (Bloomsbury): The peak of Babeldom was probably realized during the Neolithic Age, “the moment in the human story,” as Laura Spinney notes in her new book Proto, “when more languages were spoken than at any other”—when a worldwide population in the tens of millions talked in as many as fifteen thousand different tongues. At present, eight billion speakers get by with aroun…