"A superbly original book on an important topic and the most exciting piece of philosophy I’ve read in a long time. Cloud builds on major philosophical work by David Lewis and Brian Skyrms to provide a serious account of the evolution of language that both recognizes the long and complex process that links the prior state (nothing like language at all) to the end state (language of the kinds now in existence) and that responds to the points of greatest difficulty in that process."

— Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University

"Starting with David Lewis and Brian Skyrms, Daniel Cloud has done much more than given us a 'just so story' about the evolution of language. He has identified the real obstacles it had to surmount and creatively drawn on the best hard science to show how it must have overcome them."

— Alex Rosenberg, Duke University

"This stimulating and engagingly-written book lucidly defends a remarkable proposal. According to it, just as a breeder of honeybees makes choices that influence the evolution of domesticated bees, all of us -- by choosing which words and practices to employ, and which ones to scowl, chuckle, or roll our eyes at -- actively influence the evolution of our language and culture."

— Adam Elga, Princeton University