The Sounds of the World's Languages (Phonological Theory)

This book is excellent and I have found it very useful both as a theorist and a fieldworker. It clarifies many common misconceptions about the nature and diversity of speech sounds, drawing on many years of studies by the authors and others. And by giving equal time to the phonetics of less-well-known languages, this book provides a corrective to phonetic references that concentrate primarily on English and other well-studied languages.

As a non-linguist, this is the best book on world languages for phonological questions and extra notes when you're writing an acoustic textbook. See the first few chapters of my "Acoustics of Speech Communication", 1999. Allyn & Bacon - - J.M. Pickett

Phoneticians, pronunciation editors of dictionaries, linguists, language teachers, and others who are-and ought to be-interested in and knowledgeable about the sounds of many languages and who have-and ought to have-sufficient background and training to understand the technical materials on which understanding of the text relies will be amply rewarded by this valuable book.

As reviewed by Laurence Urdang, in the Summer 1996 issue (Vol. XXIII, No. 1) of VERBATIM, The Language Quarterly