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.