The Books of Mark David Ledbetter, Historian and Linguist
Mark David Ledbetter is an erudite but anti-elitist
writer, an academic who is anti-academic, a historian, linguist, and social philosopher who questions the assumptions
we’ve all been subtly brainwashed in or absorbed from the mainstream media and
from the academic establishment. In language that swings from intelligent
insights and breathtaking revelations to folksy humor, Language and Globalization: A History of Us All challenges our
prejudices about globalization, immigration, being swamped or overrun by other
cultures, and linguistic or racial purity. In every controversy in which humans
argue or go to war against each other (war and genocide—often
indistinguishable--being the ultimate and “final solution” to an intractable
argument), we ought to pause and reflect for a moment our common origins. And
then we realize: we are all brothers and sisters who have made this journey
together, this human journey that began just 150,000 years back in Africa for
all of us, black, white, brown, yellow, or pink. This is our shared adventure.
We built this civilization together, and it therefore belongs to us all.
Immigration police, border walls, border fences, and color bars will ultimately
be overcome, bridged, or crossed, because that is written into the human
destiny. It’s not any single person’s or group’s fault or making; it’s in our
common human genetic makeup driving us inexorably towards the future.
As for language, it is fascinating to me that of
the thousands of living and recognized languages presently in the world today,
most originated in a common language not so far back, and that linguists and
geneticists, following their separate rigorous disciplines, have both arrived
at the same conclusions about our common origins.
Nearly every other writer who has a view on these matters, if you examine it closely, has a (mostly hidden) agenda; but Mark David Ledbetter has none,
except peace, tolerance, freedom, humanity, and the survival and happiness of
us all (and this is also true of his other compelling and important book, Dancing on the Edge of the Widening Gyre).
This is what makes me respect him and wish him more readers than ever,
especially for Language and Globalization and Dancing on the Edge of the Widening Gyre, which truly are books for our times.
Below, I give a list of his books, and a few of the online bookstores they are available at, besides Amazon: three of these are currently free at Apple,
Kobo,
Barnes
& Noble, besides Tolino, Playster, 24Symbols, Overdrive, and the
subscription service, Scribd.
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