William Grimes: Is French an invalid?

Is French a surprisingly robust international presence, as the authors' carefully harvested statistics seem to suggest, or an invalid that needs help crossing the street, terrified at being run down by Anglo-Saxon vehicles with an insane, cursing American at the wheel?

  --William Grimes in the New York Times, 29 November 2006, in a review of The Story of French, by Nadeau and Barlow