Given the small number of introductory psycholinguistics books currently available, it is notonly refreshing to find a new one but also delightful to find one as accessible to generalaudiences as Altmann's The Ascent of Babel. Altmann, a professor at theUniversity of York and an established psycholinguistics researcher, aimed to write a book thatanyone could understand and enjoy. Indeed, he has succeeded. The result is not just anotherrun-of-the-mill textbook. The prose reads like the transcription from a semester of lectures orfrom a very long conversation carried out between mentor and student. The prose reads assmoothly as it does, in part, because there are no references cited within the text. They have beenincluded at the end of the book in a chapter-by-chapter format. In addition, very few researchersare mentioned by name, which serves to speed readers along, allowing them to focus on findingsrather than individuals. The names that are mentioned are of those at the top of the field whoshould become known to every student of psycholinguistics.