As a contrast to 'The Language Instinct' I would highly recommend 'Don't Sleep There are Snakes' by linguist Daniel Everett, which follows his time living with

As a contrast to 'The Language Instinct' I would highly recommend 'Don't Sleep There are Snakes' by linguist Daniel Everett, which follows his time living with a remote tribe in the Amazon and learning their language. A very nice introduction of the idea of recursion in linguistics, and a rebuttal of the old dogma that there is in fact such a thing as a language instinct.