Ben Waber reviewed Rise of English by Rosemary Salomone
An Around-the-World Tour of the Trajectory of English's Growing Dominance
4 stars
Salomone provides a fascinating analysis of the factors that are driving the growing dominance of English as the lingua franca of the world, from the desire of smaller countries to maintain competitive businesses and academic institutions, to anti-colonial currents in Africa, to navigating the challenges of a wide variety of local languages in India. There's a lot of time here spent on Europe, and the efforts of France in particular to reclaim the mantle its language formerly held.
Importantly this book is highly focused on the last few decades, and so starts at a point where English is already fairly dominant. I would have liked more on its earlier rise starting at the turn of the 20th century, but to be fair this book already covers a ton of ground. Highly recommend