Reviewed by Marc Pierce, University of Texas at Austin

This book, prepared by one of the most productive and best-known historians of linguistics, offers exactly what the title indicates: an index of names and birth and death dates of important linguists. No other biographical information is given; for that, Koerner refers readers to other sources. There are three brief prefatory sections: ‘Preface and acknowledgements’ (vii–ix) explains the origins and limits of the project; ‘Afterthought’ (x) reviews some of the sources used in compiling the index; and ‘Remarks on the arrangement of the index’ (xi–xvi) discusses matters like alphabetical ordering and transliteration. The index is printed in double columns, and the volume itself is sturdily bound and cleanly edited with only a handful of typographical errors. As to its accuracy, I spot-checked a number of the entries and found them generally correct.

Projects like this invariably face a good deal of difficulty: they can never be exhaustive, one can always quibble over the scholars who are included, and they can quickly become outdated (e.g. Elmer Antonsen, a well-known Germanic linguist, is listed in this volume as still living, although he died in the summer of 2008). Some might also think that such projects are not very useful (after all, how helpful can it be to know an author’s birth and death dates in the absence of any other biographical information?), but, as K points out, ‘such biographical dates place an author at least in some chronological context’ (vii), thus demonstrating the usefulness of such projects. My one major reservation about the volume is its extremely high cost, which presumably could have been avoided by making the index available on the internet (which also would have allowed periodic updating). The author notes that he considered this possibility, but ultimately rejected it for the understandable reason that he wanted some sort of return for the decades of work invested in its compilation (ix). These issues aside, the book will be a handy resource, especially for historians of linguistics, and certainly deserves a place on library bookshelves.