Rating: 
Summary: This book has passion, compassion and love of language.
Review: This book is filled with passion, compassion, and great intellectual endeavor. It reflects the era in which the OED was conceived, when Rule Brittania was the measure of things great. I was surprised to learn yet another facet of our Civil War, hitherto unknown to me. Despite the supposed dryness of the subject, "lexicography" the narrative moves at a fast clip. The three central figures, The Professor, The Doctor and The Dictionary will long stay in my memory.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful story: Oddly lacking subject index
Review: A wonderful story of the love of words and information. Who would have thought that the compilation of the OED would provide personal stories at least as dramatic as the backdrop of so much history: war? Oddly, even though much of the vast contribution to the OED by Dr. Minor (title's madman) was in indexing word usage--there is no index to the book. This is a sad and glaring oversight, which limits the usefulness of the volume as a reference.
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Summary: A skillful mixture of sensationalism & scholarly review.
Review: The story of one of the major contributors to the OED.Written fairly well, even if the author sometimes stoops to a rag-magazine sensationalist style.(Although one can't be too hard on a writer who wants their book to actually SELL these days!)FYI: It was reviewed in a fascinating article in the August or September issue of the Smithsonian magazine.Check that out!
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Summary: Comments on The Surgeon of Crowthorne reviewed UK
Review: Readers of these US reviews of Simon Winchester's book may be interested to read the solitary review posted on Amazon.co.uk which corrects and amplifies some of the information included in this fascinating history. Have you considered including it, along with a note of the book's British title on this page? I think the cross reference would interest other browsers.
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Summary: A yarn that misses the essential of healing relationships..
Review: Mr. Winchester must have relied on academic opinions that emphasize the nature rather than nurture characteristics of Paranoid Schizophrenia. The humane individualized effort of Drs.Orange and Nicholson to encourage and promote Dr. Minor's costly but health-enhancing bibliophilic and painting interests illustrate how nurturing influences do modify and improve the natural course of this terrible illness. Dr.Brayn's cold-veined determination to de-individualize and dehumanize Dr. Minor's life at Broadmoor was probably associated with the decline in scholarly productivity and the eventual self-mutilation. This is regularly observed in incarcerated populations. The relational aspects of healing often have far greater influence than the hereditary contributions that academic consultants ...inexperienced with chronic treatment... like to emphasize.
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Summary: Slow-paced, but intriguing account of mental illness
Review: Not nearly as sensational as title would have you think, the book is a careful, even understated account of the creation of the OED. For literature majors, primarily. An intriguing account of the contributions of a most unlikely protagonist--a schizophrenic murderer. Makes you wonder at the thought of prisoners and patients being put to good use, contributing, if at a remove, from the society from which they originated.
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Summary: An enthralling tale of madness, murder and the OED
Review: Simon Winchesters previous books were mostly travelogues, with many a good story interwoven. This time he dispenses with the travel and just tells a great, wierd, historical, lexicographic tale. And all true. A captivating read.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining,not captivating
Review: I was expecting to be swept off my feet by this book, which promised to be thrilling and fascinating. I was disappointed.While Winchester does a good job of telling the story (his tangents can be a bit trying), he fails to build compelling tension, so there is no climax -- something you may expect with a book about a murderer contributing to the OED. Indeed, after reading the jacket cover, the entire work is a denouement. I think Winchester could have done much more with the story, although he does an adequate job. His vocabulary-brandishing tactics are a bit annoying too. In all, I was left feeling unsatisfied and a bit cheated.
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Summary: disappoint\vb: to fail to fulfill the expectation or hope ~
Review: The title is misleading as this book is really the about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary. The so-called "madman", one of the major contributors to the massive project, does not appear as often as I would have liked. He is a tragic figure, a criminally insane American surgeon who was housed at England's Broadmoor asylum for the majority of his life. Mr. Winchester occasionally uses him as a vehicle to enhance the tale of the lugubrious task of the compilation of one of the English-speaking world's greatest literary achievements. In selecting the book, I'd looked forward to the surgeon's story rather than tiresome text, dates and definitions. The latter, alas, is what I found.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced and well written.
Review: Who would have thought that this topic would turn into such a page turner? I found the two main characters fascinating men. The author delivers the goods in a concise and well-designed book.
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