Customer Reviews

The Professor and The Madman

5 star:		(121)
4 star:		(122)
3 star:		(61)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I like reading the occasional historical fact (rather than historical fiction) "novelette," and The Professor and the Madman was definitely easy to get through. One can learn much from books like this, particularly the way normal people lived their day-to-day lives in a certain time and place.

A few things I liked about this book:

1. One will assuredly learn a thing or two about the English language, in reading it. You will learn some obsolete words, the origin of some words, and just get a refresher of other, more common words. Each chapter begins with a dictionary entry of a particular word, some very normal words, some more exotic words.

2. The parallel lives of the two main characters are interesting to follow. One feels real emotions for both. There are a few shocking moments in the book, which stand out quite a bit in front of the otherwise fairly tame narrative.

3. I grew up with the Oxford English Dictionary, and I always wondered how they compiled all the words. It was great learning about how they did that.

4. The book covers an array of themes and topics, and a fairly diverse geography. Mental illness, civil war, sexual propriety, crime and punishment, one can learn a little bit about a lot of issues in the reading of Simon Winchester's book.

I wouldn't recommend the book to just anyone, though. It can be kind of slow, and sometimes one simply grows tired of bouncing back and forth between the two main characters. It is also fairly short; one sort of wishes for more detail on certain events. In some places, the book reads like a crime/detective novel from the 19th century, in others it is more like a biography. It sort of skips around from one style to the next, almost as if different parts were written at very different times by an author in very different states of mind. Overall, though, this book is a nice, quick read, a good plot, and you will learn a thing or two from it.

This book is an 'easy' read. However, it's content is not what one might expect! I found the book quite fascinating and, at the same time learned a lot, amongst other important issues, about American history during the civil war.
The two main characters definitely left a lasting legacy! Who would have thought that, the creation of the Oxford Dictionary would involve such people of different backgrounds and, personal history.

This book stands out as one one should read!

Helga Sarkar

Enjoyed reading this book. Well written, and very interesting. Certainly proves that the truth can be stranger than fiction. Will be reading more from this author.

The Professor & the Madman is both captivating and informative. The conception of the Oxford English Dictionary is an unparalleled testament of hardship and one man's redemption within confinement. The story outlines the lives of two pivotal characters Dr. William Minor and Sir James Murray. Both undertook a philological endeavor that has defined the English language we know today. Not only did I find this story entertaining, but I now have an interest in philology. This book is a great example of the oddities that define our world.

In contrast to other of Simon Winchesters' publications such as The Map that Changed the World and Krakatoa. The Professor & the Madman had more of a linear flow and was much easier to read. Unlike the other two it was not saturated with implicit information.

I highly recommend The Professor & the Madman.

This book leaves me with a myriad of emotions! It is quite depressing about one man's passion and his madness. It is a wonderful study of a man obsessed words. And yet, at times I found it darkly humorous. I mean if you were working on a project that would take 70 years, you would never see finished in your lifetime, you were trying to catalogue EVERY word in the English language, the origins and variations, and do this in the 1800's when there was no computers - no typewriters....well, you would HAVE to be mad.

So if you have ever used a dictionary, you need to read this. It will give you a new appreciation of the book of words.

Talk about a tulip bulb phenomenon. Everybody loves this book because everybody loves this book. Yes, it has some interesting thoughts, but they are stretched out and repeated to fill space. Nice concept, but more appropriately a magazine or Sunday paper article rather than a whole book.

Winchester's love of the lexicographer and his patient, painstaking task make, ironically enough, for a fast, revealing read.

Winchester introduces each chapter with a definition from the OED and cleverly uses it to tie his narratives together. This technique is reminiscent of Faulkner's "The Unvanquished."

It's a shame, however, that Winchester can't get over his disdain for Christianity. He repeatedly attributes the madness of William Minor, one of the books central protagonists, to a strict Protestant upbringing.

Was Winchester paying homage to the spirits of Emerson and Thoreau?

Tom Wolfe's "Two Young Men Who Went West" "Hooking Up" offers a much more complimentary expose of the Protestant influence on American culture and the high tech industry in particular.

I thought this would be an interesting book. I was mistaken. It was dry. Don't waste your time.

Yes, it is an interesting aside that a "madman" helped write the Oxford Dictionary. It would have made a very nice article for a scholary magazine, but padded out it makes a very boring book. The fact of the matter is, the author really doesn't know all that much about W.C. Minor.

I like Winchester's style of writing. He is able to take some very focused, sometimes obscure, historical subjects and relate them in a way that is both entertaining and informative. This particular work is the second of two books he has written about the creation of the 'Oxford English Dictionary'. The first is The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary which is a broad look at the dictionary's history, with special focus on the most prominent editor, Professor James Murray. Professor Murray is, of course, the same professor as in the 'Professor and the Madman' wherein the (much narrower) focus of the tale is the one Dr W.C. Minor, the lunatic murderer who was such a prolific contributor to the OED project.

On the whole, I preferred this book (which actually was written earlier than the other, as I learned to my surprise). It is much lighter in tone than the later work and I found my sympathies engaged by the tragic history of the poor Doctor more so than I did the treatment of Murray (who, admittedly, is really only a subordinate 'character' to the dictionary itself). Having said that, though, I have to acknowledge that I probably would not have enjoyed reading about Minor's story quite as much had I not read 'The Meaning Everything' first. I think it would be much harder to appreciate Minor's contribution to the OED without the much more detailed account of just how the dictionary was compiled that the later book provides.

It is, just possibly, a bit of a shame that Winchester could not have written the history of the three characters (the OED, Murray and Minor) in one comprehensive volume. That may, in hindsight, have forestalled some criticisms that have been leveled at the two works individually (one book too short, the other a bit dry, etc.) but one can hardly criticize him for not having been inspired to cover the OED history before that of the poor Doctor. I enjoyed both books individually and I am glad I was able to read each as a complement to the other.