This volume presents a comprehensive study of the rise and fall of three prominent international auxiliary languages—Volapük, Esperanto, and Ido—and of the factors that have led to the repeated failure of attempts to construct and widely adopt such artificial languages. It is a valuable resource for historians and linguists interested in the subject of international auxiliary languages and linguae francae.

Garvía begins by surveying the social, political, intellectual, and philosophical climate that existed in Europe in the late seventeenth and late nineteenth century—two critical junctures in the development of constructed languages. The chapters in the following four parts examine in detail the history and development of three of the most significant auxiliary languages, listed above.

Part 1 (chapters 2‒6) traces the history of Volapük, which was first presented by Johann Martin Schleyer in 1879. The author begins by surveying the origins and grammar of Volapük, and its intended speaker community. Its dual purpose was to facilitate international business and scientific communication and to serve as an instrument for achieving mutual understanding and world peace. Volapük failed to achieve these lofty goals, however, due to external criticism of the language itself, competition from rival linguistic projects, and interference from the scientific community. Internal problems relating to Schleyer's own authoritarian strategies and confrontation between social conservatives and reformists finally made it impossible to standardize this invented language.

Part 2 (chapters 7‒11) is a detailed analysis of Esperanto, first developed by Ludwig Zamenhof in the 1880s. Garvía describes Zamenhof's two main convictions regarding its purpose: (i) it should foster a nonnational, cosmopolitan identity that will promote political understanding and thereby help to unite the human race, and (ii) it must be capable of developing itself further through continual interaction between speakers. As was the case with Volapük, a number of obstacles limited the adoption of Esperanto by speaker communities in Zamenhof's homeland of Russia and in some European countries.

Part 3 (chapters 12‒15) takes a closer look at the history of various Esperanto speaker communities. By analyzing demographic data gathered on known Esperantists, Garvía clarifies the rationales and methodologies used in learning and applying the language. The success of Esperanto was found to be attributable to the support of a diverse community of pacifists, Hinterweltler (spiritualists, theosophists, and vegetarians), Catholics and Protestants, freethinkers, socialists, and Herderians.

Part 4 (chapters 16‒17) first focuses on the third most widely accepted artificial language, Ido—a reformed version of Esperanto that appeared around 1900. The author then describes the struggles which ensued between Esperantists and Idists, and the flaws in the latter's organizational strategies, which led eventually to the propagation of a number of minor linguistic contestants, including Occidental, Novial, and Basic English.

The conclusion provides a concise summary of the factors responsible for the triumph of Esperanto over Volapük and Ido, as well as an outline of the causes that led to its failure to be adopted as an international language in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.