The message in the bottle

By Walker Percy

Subjects: Language and culture

Description: Walker Percy, a Catholic, a physician, a man bent to philosophy, became interested in semiotics, the field which studies the meaning of language when he involved himself in teaching his congenitally deaf daughter to speak. In the process he discovered that to understand man (or man the wayfarer as he called us) one should start with understanding language, that singularly unique attribute of man. This book is about what he discovered along the way and is totally fascinating. The reader will learn little about the highly technical field of semiotics, but will see human nature clearly. It is worth the read.