Hello:
 
My name is Andy Howey.  I live in Campbell, California, and I am a former military "linguist".  The languages on which I primarily focused were German and Russian, but I've had some exposure to related languages (Dutch, Low Saxon, Czech, Serbo-Croatian).
 
I started reading about Nostratic on the Net about five or six years ago and was intrigued with the idea.  Prior to that, back in the early 80's, I had read a couple of books, the titles and authors of which I no longer remember, one positing a connection between Semitic and Indo-European and the other positing a connection between Uralic and Indo-European.  I seem to recall also having read something about a connection of Altaic with either Uralic and/or Indo-European during that time frame.
 
I was wondering if somebody could recommend one or more fairly recent books that cover Nostratic or Eurasiatic so that I can get "caught up", so to speak, and better understand any discussions that happen on this list.  If there are any books available on any of the other proposed macro-familiies (SIno-Caucasian (or Dene-Sino-Caucasian), Amerind, Afro-Asiatic, etc.), I would really appreciate getting information about those, as well.
 
Thank you very much in advance:
 
Andy Howey