Our magnificent bastard tongue the untold history of English

Listening to the audio version helped, I think. It's well-told, the author is interesting (if a little pompous), and there are a lot of new concepts here (for me, a non-linguist).

As a C- student of English grammar. I was surprised I enjoyed this book so much.
Not all academia is based in good science. But this author does bring in good scientific research on the evolution of english. And offers an in your face attitude to the language nazi to let the language evolve at will.