Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating look at one of the world's important books
Review: Simon Winchester's "The Professor and the Madman" is one of those tales that you wouldn't believe if you didn't know it to be non-fiction. James Murray, editor of the then-in-progress "Oxford English Dictionary," finds out that Dr. W. C. Minor, one of his steadiest and most brilliant contributors, is not what he seems. This astonishing discovery, with all its attendant ramifications, is played out against a backdrop of the American Civil War, Victorian England, the English urge to be best at whatever is attempted, late 19th-century attitudes about mental illness and more. Murray is portrayed as serious from the start about education and learning--this is a boy who by the age of fifteen had a working knowledge of French, Italian, German and Greek and who inscribed on the flyleaf of his primer, "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER." Though the other main character, Dr. W. C. Minor, would at first appear to be similar in many ways to Murray--well brought-up, brilliant, slightly eccentric--the similarities end there. Minor had the misfortune to serve as a medic in the Civil War, a time when, according to Winchester, "The common soldier was thus in a poorer position than at any time before: he could be monstrously ill treated by all the new weaponry, and yet only moderately well treated with all the old medicine." Minor's mental collapse begins here, on the bloodied American battlefields, and continues once he departs for England. In addition to the human drama at work here, we are shown the history of dictionaries for English-speakers. It is a fascinating journey. Samuel Johnson apparently wrote a terrific dictionary--one of the first really complete ones--but even this fine effort was marred by Johnson's inability to resist inserting his own viewpoints in the definitions (for "oats" Johnson wrote, "A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"). Winchester also examines the fiendish difficulty of definitions themselves in the following passage: "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 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." "The Professor and the Madman" is a heady mix of history, drama, mystery, thriller and truth--whatever that truly means, however it be defined--and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: A great story trapped in a terrible book
Review: I love the OED. I read CT Onions' "Oxford English Dictionary of English Etymologies" for fun. I couldn't stand this book. Why? The writing is awful. Winchester takes a short story and pads it to a ridiculous degree. Further, his writing is awkward and cliched; it's on the level of a 1950's pulp mystery. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But a book about the creation of one of the best-written dictionaries in the universe should be written with thought and care. Instead, The Professor and the Madman gives one the impression that the author had a page quota to fill. As other reviewers have stated, the real life story didn't have that many events. This story would have been better told in 10 pages rather than 240. Avoid this book unless you enjoy pulp mysteries as much as you enjoy the Oxford English Dictionary.
Rating: 
Summary: A book of human and academic interest
Review: As a linguist and editor of several dictionaries published in Europe, I recommend this book on several levels. First of all, it is interesting reading and good story telling (much, much more engaging that editing a dictionary, I assure you). The tale of the brilliant but doomed doctor ("the madman") is a sad but fascinating study of one man's mental deterioration and the 19th century understanding of it. Well told and documented, it is, unlike other sources I have read, an accurate and fair treatment of the subject, not just a blanket condemnation of pale, sadistic doctors waiting to electrocute and lobotomize the next schizophrenic to come their way. But it is the human story of this man's odd relationship with one of the editors of the Oxford dictionary ("the professor") set against the backdrop of an academic history that makes this book multifaceted. Though the technical detailing of the gigantic undertaking that was the creation of the first 'complete' English dictionary can sometimes drag a little, it is amazing to allow yourself to get caught up in the vast, extraordinary world of your own language. For those who have never thought about linguistics in their life, it will introduce them to the study of the miraculous gift that allows me, a stranger, to reach across space and time and communicate my thoughts to you via little phonetic symbols. For those who like the "Word Power" section of Reader's Digest, it will engage and educate on new levels, and for those stuck in offices pouring over endless manuscripts, wondering how they ever got into this business in the first place, it will remind them of why they fell in love with words in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: The Madman is the most interesting
Review: Simon Manchester has taken something I have always loved, the OED, and made it even more interesting than it is on it's own right. He does a good job in breathing life into James Murray, a scholar whose love of words made him driven to create this fabulous dictionary. The real feat of writing, however, is the story of Dr. W.C. Minor. Who could have imagined that one of the major contributors to this great work of scholarship was interred in an asylum for the crimanlly insane for an awful, senseless murder? Manchester makes Minor real, tragic, and terribly interesting. This book is a fine example of a seemingly dry topic made lively by excellent research and writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Excessive use of the word "moreover"
Review: While the story buried within this slogging narrative is fascinating, the writing is surprisingly poor for a book about the English language. The best books are those where the author's presences is unknown, yet Winchester makes the reader aware of his "prose" throughout, and insists upon connecting every dot, excessively pounding out every point, and using parentheticals and dashes to an annoying degree. "Moreover," it's interesting how such great subject matter was laid out in such a dull manner, making it seem like the work of a second year English student who hasn't quite grasped the concept of telling a story in a manner that makes the reader want to continue reading. Oh well, read it for the story, but don't expect great writing along the way.
Rating:
Summary: How can a book about a dictionary be interesting?
Review: Quite simply a book about a dictionary can without a doubt be boring to me, but Winchester for the most part kept my interest with a story line of murder, mystery, and insanity. Any book with scholarly intent can become dry in some parts. This held true for The Professor and the Madman, but my boredom was quickly replaced with suspense. That suspense was heightened by consequences of the war and one's own mind. I feel that some of the technicalities of word development were the underlying causes of my occasional boredom. Although I did like that Winchester was able to display his passion for words with a delicate approach, he began each chapter with the etymology of a keyword and then incorporated it into the story line. As a result, I found myself not able to put the book down. With each turn of a page, I wondered what kind of relationship would develop between the protagonists and what impact they would have on the dictionary. Winchester portrays a splendid coincidence of how life can turn out nothing like we expect, as he did when the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, Dr. James Murray, met with the unknown mysterious madman. I sympathize with Dr W. C. Minor, a man who is intelligent, yet loses his mind to an uncontrollable mental illness and then is ostracized from the only society he had ever known. This part of the story can be related to many individuals in today's society, which gives this book a sense of realism and heart-felt empathy. I recommend everyone read this book not only for the history of one of the greatest works of literature today, but also for the insight of how such a difficult task can be completed with a lot of hard work, dedication, and group effort.
Rating:
Summary: the man behind the curtain
Review: ...There were definitely a few things that I liked about The Professor and The Madman. I appreciated it for the quirky yarn that it was. A clandestine tale of an object that is so well known its reputation is world-renowned. Unfortunately, Simon Winchester, the author, uses the chic of mental illness, and sexual bravado to sell a worthless product to a sick, voyeuristic, sexually repressed American culture. The list of oversights, blunders, pedophilic Freudian slips, overt and covert racism, and rampant glaring sexism are few of the problems that I had with this little ditty of a novel.
True to form a white male writer decides to write a book about other white men and uses an omniscient perspective, as arrogant white men are wont to do, to weave his little tale. I say his tale because had Angela Y. Davis, a prolific black radical feminist writer and activist who is a former black panther, had written this book it might have looked a little different. When Simon begins to stumble his way through the story of Mr. Minor and Mr. Murray he lets us see the dysfunctional man behind the omniscient curtain of his perspective. The first break in theme that I noticed was on page 39. Here Simon describes a photograph, but instead of an omniscient description the photo becomes a Rorschach test.
ÒA photograph of him survives form 1901: He wears an impish smirk, not least because he is surrounded by eight pretty members of the Hammersmith sculling club for Girls, content and well-exercised women whose skirts may be long but whose shirts lie snug on their ample breasts.Ó I cannot see the necessity of using this photo in the book at all, but letÕs just say that it has some kind of literary and historical appeal. After loaning this photograph tentative credit, the author quickly tarnishes it with the explicit descriptions of the length of their skirts and the ampleness of their breasts. These are subjective judgments are based solely on the sexist conditioning of our not so hidden author. The description on page 44 of the Sri Lankan women is even more demonstrative of his blatant racism, sexism, and tendency to sexualize children. I had thought that maybe the author was graciously trying to give us the flavor of the 1900Õs by immersing us in the mindset and language of the men of that time. Needless to say that thought was a fleeting one. I quickly revoked the credit I extended Winchester. We all know the capacity that anyone of any era has to rise above the occasion by calling out and denouncing oppression where they see it (Buddha, Mohammed, Ida b wells, and Fredrick Douglass to name a few.) That point aside, I noticed that on page 123 our blithering idiot of an author uses the anachronistic of analogy of Rambo, a US movie character from the 1980Õs to describe to describe drawings of men on posters in a jail cell. If our faltering guideÕs idea was to give us the flavor of 18th century England, using a character from the wrong time, the wrong country, and from a medium that did not exist was probably a poor choice of similes.
I was also appalled at the oversight of how the English language has been and continues to be used as tool of domination and imperialism worldwide by the British and the US. The part that the Oxford English Dictionary played as the biblical bastion of worldwide white supremacy in the domination of the Southern Hemisphere of our fine planet has been inimical from the inception of this ghastly book. I could go on and on about the shortcomings of this book but my sleep and time are far more important.
Enjoy the empire
M.
Rating:
Summary: well written account of the Oxford English Dictionary
Review: The premise of this book is that a raving maniac, Dr. William Minor, confined to a British lunatic asylum in Victorian England, could make significant contributions during the day to the Oxford English Dictionary because of his high intelligence. At night, he really lost his grasp on reality. The nature of these delusions are enumerated in some detail. It is a sad history for, unlike John Nash, the mathematical prodigy of "A Beautiful Mind", psychiatry in Victorian England had not reached the advanced stage necessary to help Minor, so he died a raving madman. The editors of the OED are described as "philologists" and the painstaking process of putting together the dictionary, which included the contributions of thousands of individuals is documented. The historical scope and sweep of this book is vast, from the time of the American Civil War and before, to the descriptions of the seedier sections of Victorian London, to the 1930's when the OED was at last completed. The intent of the author, I believe, is to equate
Minor's contributions with those of other productive madmen in history, like Vincent Van Gogh or the mathemetician in "A Beautiful Mind".
Rating:
Summary: A splendid read!
Review: Perfectly written considering the subject in question. However, I would have liked a little more detail about some of the words themselves--Winchester seems to gloss over some of the real detailed work that was done by both of these men.
Rating:
Summary: probably not as good as the hype
Review: This book is probably not as good as the hype surrounding it, particularly because it centers on the sad and pathetic figure of Dr. William Minor who was truly mad, a madness that caused him and society some most unfortunate consequences, most obviously his incarceration in a British insane asylum for murder. I don't think it is necessarily in society's best interest to focus so much attention as this book does on a certifiable madman, and call him some kind of a intellectual hero, as Winchester attempts to do. Perhaps Van Gogh was another such case, but I consider this an unkind sort of mockery. Perhaps his family is making some money off the book, but if I were them, I wouldn't want it advertised to the public. On the other hand, according to the book, his victim's widow did visit Dr. Minor late in life, so she at least apparently forgave him.
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