Bragg follows the spread of English across the ocean to America, exploring how the language of one empire became the language of another. The colonists claimed to speak English better than the English and the King's English became the Peoples English. But as the language went west, it went wild; America invented new ways of talking, and new words and phrases a rambunctious and splendiferous new voice for the country. In the south, tens of thousands of black slaves who were excluded from the American dream developed their own voice; the Gullah language, an African-English hybrid, still survives as a testament to oppression and dispossession.