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From: Piotr Gasiorowski
American Heritage dictionary of
Indo-European roots by Calvert Watkins. 2nd ed. (NYP - 14 Sept
2000)
Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. eds Mallory and
Adams.
Comparative Indo-European linguistics : an introduction by R.
Beekes.
All of the above are worth having
From the steppes
to the seas : Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans (NYP -
Aug
2000)
Obviously a new edition of a rather quaint book by
the late André Martinet with a dangerously epic title (Des steppes aux océans.
L'indo-européen et les "Indo-Européens"). Not entirely to my
taste.
Piotr
Piotr's list is excellent. Since is
*is* for a public library, a few others need mentioning.
In addition to R.S.P Beekes' magnificant
introduction, that of Oswald J.L. Szemerényi also must be mentioned:
_Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics_, 4th edition, 1990,
OUP.
A rather 'dated' but nontheless classic
book by Carl Darling Buck is also available: _A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms
in the Principal Indo-European
Languages: A Contribution to the History of Ideas_, U. Chicago Press. This
is a large format paperback that has four page of the original edition reduced
in size and printed on a single page (the original is over 1,000 pages long).
The price is right too, under $30.00.
A rather expensive book is Daniels and
Bright's _The World's Writing Systems_, OUP, 1996. While not immediately
pertinent to IE studies, this work is as definitive as it is magisterial and
works rather well as a introduction to just about all the world's important
languages, frequently with discussions of the grammatical-phonological quirks
encoded in their spelling systems. Any library with any pretensions to the
word should have a copy of this book, at least in their reference section.
If the budget is really lavish, then
Julius Pokorny's _Indogermanisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch_ is also
recommended. At nearly $400, this is too rich for my blood. I've never seen a
copy, but this is the book everyone quotes. While dated, it is quite simply
*the* Indo-European dictionary. Yeah, it's in German.
More generally, any and all of David
Crystal's _Cambridge Encyclopedia of ..._ books are highly recommended.
They are not too expensive, and represent a relatively painless way for an
amateur to introduce him/herself to linguistics. Crystal, so I am told does NOT
make mistakes in his books: he is as reliable as source as you could
ask.