A few days ago, I finished The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

Subtitled English and how it got that way, it actually has a lot about language in general, the ways languages change over time and comparisons about language. While the book is quite fun to read, it seems Bryson's handle on the facts is a little looser than one might like. I did learn a lot about the history of the language, and hopefully that is mostly accurate.