The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary

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Summary: An enjoyable and intellectually enriching book!
Review: This book, in addition to containing a highly unusual and intriguing story, reveals the significance and magnitude of the effort in creating the first Oxford English Dictionary. I found the book to be a highly enjoyable read, and a learning experience as well.

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Summary: Terrific read
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A very well-told tale by Winchester. I was particularly struck by the humanity demonstrated on the part of Dr. Murray toward Minor. Would this same treatment take place today if a person in charge of a project such as the OED project were to find out that one of his "vendors" resided in a mental institution? I kept expecting to learn that Murray, upon discovering where Minor resided, would doubt the validity of Minor's research and go through a "crisis" of sorts. Rather, he responded with great concern and empathy. I also appreciated that Winchester did not feel 600 pages were required to tell this tale. Sometimes, great things truly do come in small packages. My one small complaint: Winchester's writing style, in which 2 - 3 sentences were oftentimes contained within other sentences, offset by hypens , parentheses and brackets. I found myself returning to the beginning of a sentence just to remind me what the subject was. It's an effective style when used on a limited basis.

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Summary: very compelling
Review: As a librarian, I recommend this title to both predominately fiction and predominately nonfiction readers. It wins high praises from both.

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Summary: Very Captivating
Review: I was a little hesitant to begin the book but quickly found that once I began it, it was hard to put down. However, there are few slow chapters, but you will find yourself willing to get through the chapters as you anticipate the story will "pick up" again in the next chapter.

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Summary: An amazing, poignant story --very well told
Review: The tale itself makes this short book a worthwhile read, but how it is told increases the enjoyment. Combining solid scholarship with insightful characterizations, Mr. Winchester paints a vivid picture of these two men, the era and the OED project.

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Summary: For wordsmiths and lovers of esoteric history.
Review: This book is a gem. I stumbled upon it at the local library and couldn't put it down once I started. The real story is how people, whether possessing extreme gifts or extreme maladies (or both, in the case of William Minor) can impact the world positively. The bonus is a lesson on how a landmark dictionary was produced and published. I was fascinated by both aspects of the book.

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Summary: Yawn, yawn - I'd rather read a dictionary!
Review: It's an interesting story. Pity the telling of it was so un-interesting.

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Summary: An intriguing, literary work in tradition of Nabokov
Review: This may at first appear to be a quick, easy read, but it is definitely not. It is complicated, rich, alert of its own literariness. Interesting that a lot of readers found Winchester's book to be "choppy," "subjectless," "incoherent," etc. The problem, I think, is that the book has been a victim of false advertising: it's not non-fiction (at least not as the term "non-fiction" is normally used); it's not a detective novel (the mystery is solved a priori); it's not a biography or a history. It's, for lack of a better category, a decidedly postmodern work, one that lures the reader into reading it as a straight-forward, non-fictional description of the making of the OED. But, at its heart, the text, with its eliptical, brilliant style, is invested in issues of metafiction, linguistic theory, and post-structuralist thought. It is interested in the problem of "drift," of the essential inability of words to be fixed, of the difficulty of constructing a "true version of events," of the parallel between the instability of words and the instability of the mind, and much much more! Read the book alongside Foucault's Madness and Civilization or Derrida's Limited Inc. Reread it and think deeply, engage with it as though it's a product of Nabokov or Borges. Don't be fooled into believing it's a simple history or biography (though it's a lovely read even if you do read only as a traditional history or biography)--this is one of the most literate and productive works of the last few years!

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Summary: A frank look at a very unique hero of our language.
Review: The people who portray this book as weak or superficial history, just do not understand its intent. It is not a history text as much as one man's reflection on the life of a sad genius and his friendship with the "professor." Few who read or reference the OED would imagine such a tragic story would be found among its contributors. Mr. Winchester has chosen to document this story, and has done it in a very readable fashion. Worth the money.

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Summary: A fascinating read
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book, mainly for learning about some of the key people and events behind one of the greatest undertakings in the English language. A lot of us today take the existence of the dictionary for granted, not realizing how it evolved from its first incarnations, or exactly what kind of work went into its preparation. Simon Winchester does a great job tracing the history of the dictionary to give frame of reference to his main story. The details of Dr. Minor's and James Murray's histories have been carefully researched and presented so as to thoroughly engage the reader. The only drawback I found is, despite the book's applaudable effort to dispel the myths surrounding Dr. Minor's involvement in the making of the OED, sometimes the writing style inadvertently falls into this same trap of myth-making. The words "lunatic" and "madman" are often used in the sensationalized sense the Victorians used them, thereby unnecessarily judging and glamorizing Dr. Minor's mental illness. Also, the defining incident at Lambeth is written as a Victorian thriller, complete with gas lamps, "bone-chilling cold" and a figure lurking in dark narrow streets. This extra air of mystery was not needed, as the real events are more than compelling enough to make you want to read more. All in all, though, an absorbing tale.