How Language Began

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How Language Began

Author : Daniel L. Everett
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 1631496263
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis How Language Began by : Daniel L. Everett

Download or read book How Language Began written by Daniel L. Everett and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Buzzfeed Gift Guide Selection “Few books on the biological and cultural origin of humanity can be ranked as classics. I believe [this] will be one of them.” — Edward O. Wilson At the time of its publication, How Language Began received high acclaim for capturing the fascinating history of mankind’s most incredible creation. Deemed a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s), Daniel L. Everett posits that the near- 7,000 languages that exist today are not only the product of one million years of evolution but also have allowed us to become Earth’s apex predator. Tracing 60,000 generations, Everett debunks long- held theories across a spectrum of disciplines to affi rm the idea that we are not born with an instinct for language. Woven with anecdotes of his nearly forty years of fi eldwork amongst Amazonian hunter- gatherers, this is a “completely enthralling” (Spectator) exploration of our humanity and a landmark study of what makes us human. “[An] ambitious text. . . . Everett’s amiable tone, and especially his captivating anecdotes . . . , will help the neophyte along.”— New York Times Book Review

How Language Began

Author : Daniel Everett
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1782831282
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (828 download)

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Book Synopsis How Language Began by : Daniel Everett

Download or read book How Language Began written by Daniel Everett and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his groundbreaking new book Daniel Everett seeks answers to questions that have perplexed thinkers from Plato to Chomsky: when and how did language begin? what is it? and what is it for? Daniel Everett confounds the conventional wisdom that language originated with Homo sapiens 150,000 years ago and that we have a 'language instinct'. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of fields, including linguistics, archaeology, biology, anthropology and neuroscience, he shows that our ancient ancestors, Homo erectus, had the biological and mental equipment for speech one and half million years ago, and that their cultural and technological achievements (including building ocean-going boats) make it overwhelmingly likely they spoke some kind of language. How Language Began sheds new light on language and culture and what it means to be human and, as always, Daniel Everett spices his account with incident and anecdote. His book is convincing, arresting and entertaining.

How Language Began

Author : David McNeill
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139560913
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (395 download)

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Book Synopsis How Language Began by : David McNeill

Download or read book How Language Began written by David McNeill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human language is not the same as human speech. We use gestures and signs to communicate alongside, or instead of, speaking. Yet gestures and speech are processed in the same areas of the human brain, and the study of how both have evolved is central to research on the origins of human communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess. Nearly all theorizing about the origins of language either ignores gesture, views it as an add-on or supposes that language began in gesture and was later replaced by speech. David McNeill challenges the popular 'gesture-first' theory that language first emerged in a gesture-only form and proposes a groundbreaking theory of the evolution of language which explains how speech and gesture became unified.

Language

Author : Daniel L. Everett
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307907023
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (79 download)

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Book Synopsis Language by : Daniel L. Everett

Download or read book Language written by Daniel L. Everett and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

Human Language

Author : Peter Hagoort
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262042630
Total Pages : 753 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Language by : Peter Hagoort

Download or read book Human Language written by Peter Hagoort and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels. In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization. Section editors Christian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema

Why Only Us

Author : Robert C. Berwick
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262533499
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Only Us by : Robert C. Berwick

Download or read book Why Only Us written by Robert C. Berwick and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes

Author : Daniel Everett
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1847651224
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (476 download)

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Book Synopsis Don't Sleep, There are Snakes by : Daniel Everett

Download or read book Don't Sleep, There are Snakes written by Daniel Everett and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirahãs, they converted him. He shows the slow, meticulous steps by which he gradually mastered their language and his gradual realisation that its unusual nature closely reflected its speakers' startlingly original perceptions of the world. Everett describes how he began to realise that his discoveries about the Pirahã language opened up a new way of understanding how language works in our minds and in our lives, and that this way was utterly at odds with Noam Chomsky's universally accepted linguistic theories. The perils of passionate academic opposition were then swiftly conjoined to those of the Amazon in a debate whose outcome has yet to be won. Everett's views are most recently discussed in Tom Wolfe's bestselling The Kingdom of Speech. Adventure, personal enlightenment and the makings of a scientific revolution proceed together in this vivid, funny and moving book.

When Time Began (Book V)

Author : Zecharia Sitchin
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1591439159
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis When Time Began (Book V) by : Zecharia Sitchin

Download or read book When Time Began (Book V) written by Zecharia Sitchin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1994-03-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Night and day, month after month, year after year, our ancestors dutifully recorded the passage of time on clay tablets, watching the heavens from stage towers and pyramids and from megalithic monuments whose incredible size and precise architecture boggle the mind. . . . Who were the builders of these mysterious structures? What was their purpose? Whose signature is indelibly written on these timeless stones, and who was the Divine Architect? Why was Stonehenge and its likes built by ancient civilizations at the very same time--4,100 years ago? What is their message for our time? With these questions in mind, Zecharia Sitchin, renowned researcher of past ages, takes us on a journey through the records of time in this, the fifth book of his Earth Chronicles series. Drawing deeply on Sumerian and Egyptian writings, millenia-old artifacts, and sacred architecture ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, this bestselling scholar provides astounding insights into the origins of the calendar, astronomy, and astrology. He takes readers to the climax circa 2100 b.c. when Marduk, the Babylonian national god, attained supremacy on Earth and proclaimed the New Age of Aries--after which society, religion, science, and the status of women were never the same.

Creating Language

Author : Morten H. Christiansen
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026203431X
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Creating Language by : Morten H. Christiansen

Download or read book Creating Language written by Morten H. Christiansen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-03-18 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work that reveals the profound links between the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, and proposes a new integrative framework for the language sciences. Language is a hallmark of the human species; the flexibility and unbounded expressivity of our linguistic abilities is unique in the biological world. In this book, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater argue that to understand this astonishing phenomenon, we must consider how language is created: moment by moment, in the generation and understanding of individual utterances; year by year, as new language learners acquire language skills; and generation by generation, as languages change, split, and fuse through the processes of cultural evolution. Christiansen and Chater propose a revolutionary new framework for understanding the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, offering an integrated theory of how language creation is intertwined across these multiple timescales. Christiansen and Chater argue that mainstream generative approaches to language do not provide compelling accounts of language evolution, acquisition, and processing. Their own account draws on important developments from across the language sciences, including statistical natural language processing, learnability theory, computational modeling, and psycholinguistic experiments with children and adults. Christiansen and Chater also consider some of the major implications of their theoretical approach for our understanding of how language works, offering alternative accounts of specific aspects of language, including the structure of the vocabulary, the importance of experience in language processing, and the nature of recursive linguistic structure.

Language vs. Reality

Author : N.J. Enfield
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262368773
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Language vs. Reality by : N.J. Enfield

Download or read book Language vs. Reality written by N.J. Enfield and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.

The Language Instinct

Author : Steven Pinker
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062032526
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis The Language Instinct by : Steven Pinker

Download or read book The Language Instinct written by Steven Pinker and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Dark Matter of the Mind

Author : Daniel L. Everett
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022607076X
Total Pages : 395 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Dark Matter of the Mind by : Daniel L. Everett

Download or read book Dark Matter of the Mind written by Daniel L. Everett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of interrelationships among culture, language, and the individual unconscious (the dark matter of the mind ), how these feed into a sense of self, and implications for the notion of human nature. The first part of the book is concerned with perceptual and cultural bases of dark matter and the effect of dark matter on perception (especially vision) and the interpretation of discourse. The second part is concerned with the contribution of dark matter to languagewith language viewed as a combination of speech and gesture, and including issues related to translation. In the final part Everett addresses implications of his account, summarizing and extending arguments for replacing an instinct-based account of human nature with a culturally-based, dark matter view of the constructed self. Everett makes a powerful argument for the influence of culture on unconscious forces that underlie human behavior and the individual s sense of self, with much of the power of the argument coming from the deep insights he gained from living and working with the Pirahas of the Amazon. This is an important book that sits at the intersection of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and it is enriched by a combination of the author s knowledge of these fields and his cross-cultural perspective. The book will make an important contribution to newly emerging directions taken by cognitive science. After decades of a field derailed by ethnocentric, instinct-based views of language and the mind, the cognitive sciences need such informed analyses of the relationship between culture, cognition, and language, as embodied in speech and gesture."

Roots of language

Author : Derek Bickerton
Publisher : Language Science Press
ISBN 13 : 3946234089
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (462 download)

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Book Synopsis Roots of language by : Derek Bickerton

Download or read book Roots of language written by Derek Bickerton and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roots of language was originally published in 1981 by Karoma Press (Ann Arbor). It was the first work to systematically develop a theory first suggested by Coelho in the late nineteenth century: that the creation of creole languages somehow reflected universal properties of language. The book also proposed that the same set of properties would be found to emerge in normal first-language acquisition and must have emerged in the original evolution of language. These proposals, some of which were elaborated in an article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1984), were immediately controversial and gave rise to a great deal of subsequent research in creoles, much of it aimed at rebutting the theory. The book also served to legitimize and stimulate research in language evolution, a topic regarded as off-limits by linguists for over a century. The present edition contains a foreword by the author bringing the theory up to date; a fuller exposition of many of its aspects can be found in the author's most recent work, More than nature needs (Harvard University Press, 2014).

How Life Began

Author : Alexandre Meinesz
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226519333
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis How Life Began by : Alexandre Meinesz

Download or read book How Life Began written by Alexandre Meinesz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origin of life is a hotly debated topic. The Christian Bible states that God created the heavens and the Earth, all in about seven days roughly six thousand years ago. This episode in Genesis departs markedly from scientific theories developed over the last two centuries which hold that life appeared on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago in the form of bacteria, followed by unicellular organisms half a millennia later. It is this version of genesis that Alexandre Meinesz explores in this engaging tale of life's origins and evolution. How Life Began elucidates three origins, or geneses, of life—bacteria, nucleated cells, and multicellular organisms—and shows how evolution has sculpted life to its current biodiversity through four main events—mutation, recombination, natural selection, and geologic cataclysm. As an ecologist who specializes in algae, the first organisms to colonize Earth, Meinesz brings a refreshingly novel voice to the history of biodiversity and emphasizes here the role of unions in organizing life. For example, the ingestion of some bacteria by other bacteria led to mitochondria that characterize animal and plant cells, and the chloroplasts of plant cells. As Meinesz charmingly recounts, life’s grandeur is a result of an evolutionary tendency toward sociality and solidarity. He suggests that it is our cohesion and collaboration that allows us to solve the environmental problems arising in the decades and centuries to come. Rooted in the science of evolution but enlivened with many illustrations from other disciplines and the arts, How Life Began intertwines the rise of bacteria and multicellular life with Vermeer’s portrait of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the story of Genesis and Noah, Meinesz’s son’s early experiences with Legos, and his own encounters with other scientists. All of this brings a very human and humanistic tone to Meinesz’s charismatic narrative of the three origins of life.

Where It Began

Author : Ann Redisch Stampler
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1442423226
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (424 download)

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Book Synopsis Where It Began by : Ann Redisch Stampler

Download or read book Where It Began written by Ann Redisch Stampler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After she is in a horrific car crash when drunk, Los Angeles high school student Gabriella Gardiner assumes she stole her rich boyfriend's car and smashed it into a tree, but she cannot remember anything about the events of the evening.

Because Internet

Author : Gretchen McCulloch
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735210942
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Because Internet by : Gretchen McCulloch

Download or read book Because Internet written by Gretchen McCulloch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!! Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and The Washington Post A Wired Must-Read Book of Summer “Gretchen McCulloch is the internet’s favorite linguist, and this book is essential reading. Reading her work is like suddenly being able to see the matrix.” —Jonny Sun, author of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

Codependent No More

Author : Melody Beattie
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1592857922
Total Pages : 155 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (928 download)

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Book Synopsis Codependent No More by : Melody Beattie

Download or read book Codependent No More written by Melody Beattie and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-10 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a crisis, it's easy to revert to old patterns. Caring for your well-being during the coronavirus pandemic includes maintaining healthy boundaries and saying no to unhealthy relationships. The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life. Is someone else's problem your problem? If, like so many others, you've lost sight of your own life in the drama of tending to someone else's, you may be codependent--and you may find yourself in this book--Codependent No More. The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life. With instructive life stories, personal reflections, exercises, and self-tests, Codependent No More is a simple, straightforward, readable map of the perplexing world of codependency--charting the path to freedom and a lifetime of healing, hope, and happiness. Melody Beattie is the author of Beyond Codependency, The Language of Letting Go, Stop Being Mean to Yourself, The Codependent No More Workbook and Playing It by Heart.