A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning is Jackendoff's most important book since his groundbreaking Foundations of Language. Written with an informality that belies the originality of its insights, it presents a radical new account of the relation between language, meaning, rationality, perception, consciousness, and thought, and, extraordinarily, does this in terms a non-specialist will grasp with ease. Jackendoff starts out by looking at languages and what the meanings of words and sentences actually do.

Aczel's latest book addresses the truly fascinating topic of the origins and meanings of early cave art. I had never really given much thought to what these early artists had in mind as they created their marvellously evocative and complex images underground in the damp fetid darkness aided by the light of animal fat lamps. I frankly had no idea exactly how old these images were (12,000 to 32,000 years old) nor some of the extraordinarily difficult environments in which these brilliant images were created.