While browsing the New Books section of the library, I stumbled upon—what else?—a linguistics book. Guy Deutscher’s The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention is a fascinating account of how the evolution of complex structures in language can be explained using just a few very basic principles of language change. The first several chapters explain these principles with wonderful illustrations from a diverse set of languages, ranging from Akan to Akkadian to English. (Ever wonder how Proto-Indo-European dont became tooth in English? The answer lies in the famous sound change known as Grimm’s Law.) Since I’ve saved my Historical Linguistics class for next semester, many of these concepts were new to me, and I think Deutscher does an excellent job of elucidating each of them.
One of the coolest aspects of this book is that while it touches on some of the coolest features studied by linguists, it does not assume prior familiarity with linguistics. So all you non-linguists need to read it as well 
—it’ll give you an appreciation for how we all make use of such a complex and varied phenomenon.
If you’re interested, I’ve written summaries of the chapters in more detail:
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