The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
By Steven Pinker
Penguin £25, 499 pages
FT bookshop price: £20

I remember receiving the US text of Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct from Penguin in the early 1990s and being asked for an opinion about UK publication. I said that it was one of the best books about language I had ever read. Each time a Pinker books comes out, I say that to myself. But this one beats them all.