Author:Margalit Fox
Genre: Non-fiction
The book is the documentation of a particular village in Israel where, due to the high percentage of deafness, a sign language spontaneously arose 3 generations ago. The author is a journalist (journalist's turned author's keep picking interesting topics) who was permitted to tag along with the linguistics team that is studying the language.
The book is organized into alternating chapters, odd numbered chapters deal with the visits to the village, the process of documenting and studying, even numbered chapters deal with the linguistics background.
The author does a great job of introducing the field of linguistics in a very readable way, covering the evolution of the field (structural linguists who documented languages to Noam Chomsky), sign language in North America and the eventual study of sign language as a language.
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