Books
My books have followed questions that arose from nearly fifty years of fieldwork—how do language and culture influence one another, and what can that tell us about what it means to be human?
Why these books
I began with technical studies and grammars of Amazonian languages, especially Pirahã and Wari’. Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes brought that work to a wider audience through the story of my life among the Pirahã.
Language: The Cultural Tool, Dark Matter of the Mind, and How Language Began developed a broader argument: language is a human invention, shaped by culture, history, and the need to communicate. I have also written a practical guide to linguistic fieldwork and am currently working on two new books. Born of the River (Profile Books, Summer 2027) gathers more than thirty first-person accounts that I collected from nearly twenty Amazonian communities over the course of my fieldwork, tracing the stages of life from birth to what comes after death. I am also completing Peircean Linguistics, a new theory of language built on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce.
Start here
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes
Pantheon Books · 2008
The account of thirty years among the Pirahã of the Amazon — the book that brought a linguist’s fieldwork on language, culture and belief to a wide readership.
How Language Began
Liveright (W. W. Norton) · 2017
Dark Matter of the Mind
University of Chicago Press · 2016
Language: The Cultural Tool
Pantheon Books · 2012
Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide
Cambridge University Press · 2012
Wari': the Pacaas Novos Language of Western Brazil
Routledge · 1997
Shaping the Future of Business Education
Palgrave Macmillan · 2013
From fieldwork to linguistic theory: A tribute to Dan Everett
Language Science Press · 2024
Charles Sanders Peirce: O Juggernaut Americano
Editora da Universidade de Pernambuco · 2024
In the press“A book whose importance is almost impossible to overstate. This is an intellectual cri de coeur and a profound celebration of human diversity … A very rich but also very readable book.”
The Sunday Times
Written in the field
All of my books, lectures, and articles have been based to a large degree on my field research. Anything of value I have discovered or proposed about the nature, origin, and uses of human language derive from what I have been taught by different Amazonian communities.
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes was an NPR Best Book of 2009, Blackwell’s Best of 2009 in the UK, a Sunday Times Editor’s Choice and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
The books have been translated into eighteen languages.
Fifteen books and more than 120 scientific articles.