Laura Spinney

Black and white portrait of a woman with short hair wearing a dark turtleneck, smiling and looking slightly over her shoulder against a plain background.

Laura Spinney is a journalist and the author of Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, and two novels.

Everything Articles

Book cover for "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" by Laura Spinney, featuring contour lines on a beige background, explores the journey of this killer language that reshaped communication worldwide.

Is English a “killer” language — or is it dying?

English could settle into a state of "diglossia" where a gulf exists between the written form and its spoken varieties, but the two are bound into a single tongue.

What big history says about how royal women exercise power

New research compares the roles and political clout of royal women in eight societies spanning five continents and more than 4,000 years.

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