The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we should think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.

‘A whooping, joy-filled and hyperbolic raid on, of most things, the theory of evolution.’ (Dwight Garner, New York Times)

Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, uses us with an eye-opening journey that’s sure to arouse widespread controversy. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a fascinating, paradigm-shifting discussion that speech–not evolution–is responsible for humanity’s complex societies and accomplishments.

From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of normal selection but later on renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the existing wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant within the Kingdom of Speech.