Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book!!!
Review: Well written book. The author does tend to be lofty tho, in usage of words. But besides having to use a dictionary every 5 minutes. Good story and well written.
Rating:
Summary: Leaves you thinking
Review: Anyone with a passion for linguistic subtleties will appreciate this story about the dedicated contributors to the first version of the Oxford English Dictionary. The most intriguing character is not W. C. Minor, the contributor confined to the asylum, but rather the editor who took the care to develop a relationship with Minor, even after discovering that he was mentally ill. The editor's devotion to Minor makes for a poignant human interest story. The audiobook version is read by a Brit, which sets the scene nicely. I was hesitant about getting the abridged format, but found that I would not have wanted a longer version.
Rating:
Summary: A Minor Classic
Review: Since the story is thin (it could be outlined in a single chapter, even a few pages), Winchester has the luxury of delving into the issues the story raises while still delivering a book short enough to entice a mass readership. His sketch of the history of English dictionaries and of the OED in particular is the meatiest and--to me--most interesting section of the book. But his tangents into the Civil War (esp. the role the Irish), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Shakespeare, ..., and mental illness (all issues organically raised by W.C. Minor's story) are fascinating. The book is rich in detail--almost ridiculously. Each chapter opens with quotes from the OED, a different word opening each chapter, each one chosen carefully. The book includes every conceivable extra--from the Preface to the Postscript, Author's Note, Acknowledgements, and Suggestions for Further Reading (all lovingly, generously written)--to an historical call for volunteers (at least in the paperback edition). Minor's story comes with a disturbing twist, so if you're expecting a quaint story about lexicography and pipe-smoking men in tweed jackets, it's a bit of a rude awakening. The author's love of the language comes through on every page, inspiring and fascinating. His voice has that familiarly British clarity of thought, that absolute confidence in the language. I've noticed that brilliant British writers usually excel from sentence to sentence; if they lose their way in a book, it tends to be in the larger structure. Here, the challenge is the scantiness of the story--or what survives of it. Winchester reconstructs what he can using a combination of imagination and thorough research, walking a fine tightrope in passages where he writes more like a novelist than a historian. Yet he always succeeds. The book leaves you wanting more.
Rating: 
Summary: For the love of words and men
Review: It's disquieting to see how many previous reviewers try to put down the blameless prose of this worthy and thoroughly enjoyable little book. Mr. Winchester was bold enough to give a classic prose treatment to a tale with post-modern interest. This is the fascinating story about the improbable meeting of two unique souls in a world that seems admirable even if only for being so completely different from our own. This is not a book about words and dicitionaries and madness and murder and war: the main theme here is old as literature itself, the friendship between two men - and all its tragic, improbable, unbearably beautiful developments. The wordy, elegant, yet entirely readable writing style of the author sets the perfect mood for the moving, nostalgic story he has to tell. Recommended for those blessed few who love the smell of old books and enjoy listening to old fellows talk about former, forgotten, brave times.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable, one of the best stories
Review: The 5 stars I have given this book is for the story itself. It is unbelievable and could almost write itself - thankfully, because the author is only mediocre. But it is well worth the read, even in this form. It opens ones eyes to another world of early dictionary compilation and the incredible collaboration with the "madman." One of those once in a lifetime books.
Rating:
Summary: The Surgeon of Crowthorne
Review: In Australia, this book is entitled "The Surgeon of Crowthorne - A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words." I was thrilled with the "tale," and this has prompted me to perform some of my own research on the mysterious figure, W. C. Minor. My only qualm is that the author, Mr. Winchester, jumps-around somewhat, however, the story picks itself up again every time. I would recommend the book to historians, teachers, and students with an interest in English Literature.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing, positively amazing
Review: Vladimir Nabokov maintained that details are the heart of fiction. Other noted writers have expressed the same view, one that could be applied to all of literature. Some readers don't like details. It is said over and over in reviews on the Amazon.com site. Given the chance, readers who loathe details would deny the pleasure to those of us who relish them. "The Professor and the Madman" is full of wonderful details. They make the story of the Oxford English Dictionary as compelling a tale as any mystery story. Its first snappy title was: "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philogical Society, edited by James A. H. Murray, LL.D, Sometime President of the Philogical Society, with the Assistance of Many Scholars and Men of Science." (Don't ask me why "The Philogical Society" becomes "the Philogical Society" in the second use. An old head once noted that if there is only one error in a book it will be in the title or on the first page.) The first "fascile" (which my dictionary does not define), the first section was published in 1884. It presented the words from "a" to "ant." In the U.S. it sold for $3.25, and I'd bet you could get that for a copy today. Before reading this book I could look a word up in the dictionary and not ponder how it got there. No more, though. James Murray, who strove to define thirty-three words every day, describes how only one can give an editor a headache: "Only those who have made the experiment know the bewilderment with which editor or sub-editor, after he has apportioned the quotations for such a word as "above" among 20, 30 or 40 groups, and furnished each of these with a provisional definition, spreads them out on a table or on the floor where he can obtain a general survey of the whole, and spends hour after hour in shifting them about like pieces on a chess-board, striving to find in the fragmentary evidence of an incomplete historical record, such a sequence of meanings as may form a logical chain of development. Sometimes the quest seems hopeless; recently, for example, the word "art" utterly baffled me for several days: something had to be done with it: something was done and put in type; but the renewed consideration of it in print, with the greater facility of reading and comparison which this afforded, led to the entire pulling to pieces and reconstruction of the edifice, extending to several columns of type." About defining words author Simon Winchester says, "Defining words properly is a fine and peculiar craft. There are rules -- a word (to take a noun as an example) must first be defined according to the class of things to which it belongs (mammal, quadruped), and then differentiated from other members of that class (bovine, female). There must be no words in the definition that are more complicated or less likely to be known than the word being defined. The definition must say what something is, and not what it is not. If there is a range of meanings of any one word -- cow having a broad range of meanings, cower having essentially only one -- then they must be stated. And all the words in the definition must be found elsewhere in the dictionary. If the definer contrives to follow all these rules, stirs into the mix an ever-pressing need for concision and elegance and if he or she is true to the task, a proper definition will probably result." One of the "Many Scholars and Men of Science" Dr. Murray referred to in the title of the first fascile was a Dr. William C. Minor, an American physician. He was formally honored by a mention in Volume 1; A-B, published in 1888. In 1890 Murray wrote, "The supreme position [among the thousands of contributors] is certainly held by Dr. W.C. Minor of Broadmoor . . . So enormous have been Dr. Minor's contributions during the past 17 or 18 years that we could easily illustrate the last 4 centuries [of literature] from his quotations alone." Broadmoor was an asylum for the criminally insane, and Dr. Minor was confined there. About seventy years after what would become the OED was conceived, the first edition was published on the very last day of 1927: "Twelve mighty volumes; 414,825 words defined, 1,827,306 illustrative quotations used, to which Dr. Minor contributed scores of thousands." The total length of type -- 227,779,589 characters, every one hand set -- was 178 miles. A grand achievement, one with incredible twists and turns. Sadly, neither Dr. Murray nor Dr. Minor lived to see it done. But I saw it from conception to completion through the eyes of Simon Winchester. For his splendid reconstruction of it I am grateful. Readers who don't like details might prefer to read the OED rather than the story of how it came to be.
Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Effort
Review: No lover of words should go without reading this book. Simon Winchester makes dictionary-making sound like great a adventure, which it was. The best part of the book, however, is the mythic quality he lends to the re-telling of the two important characters' biographies: Murray, the mastermind who devises the groundbreaking methods of dictionary-building, and Minor, an incarcerated "madman" who just happens to be the most important contributor to the enterprise.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting tale...
Review: but a little long in some places. As a matter of fact, there were a few episodes I could have gone without knowing (body mutilations), but otherwise, a very informative read. Who would have thought that such a scholary work would have been influenced by such a strange individual as the "madman"? What was also interesting about this book was the background regarding the making of the dictionary itself as well as its place in history. I am not a real avid reader of history, but this was quite informative and held my attention.
Rating: 
Summary: U Enjoy Words
Review: You enjoy words, you like a good story, maybe you're not quite 'right' too. Mystery?
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