Rating: 
Summary: Two Interesting Stories get an Unequal Treatment
Review: This book tangles two tales:The relationship between Dr. Minor and Professor Murray is interesting though not masterfully told.
The creation of the of the Oxford English Dictionary is also interesting, but told with more confidence and clarity. Of course these two stories coincide as Minor and Murray were indirectly and directly involved in the Dictionary's creation; but Winchester is clearly more fascinated with the details of the actual compilation of words than with the foggy recollection of the Minor/Murray relationship. If he weren't, this book could have been less about the Dictionary (and not at all about Murray) and be a more detailed account of Dr. Minor's fascinating, sad life. In places, there's a lack of chronology, forcing the reader to go back to recall dates mentioned earlier in the book. The proper order of details is slightly muddy, though the central story is clear. The tale of Dr. Minor and Murray, slim as it may be, is still entertaining and the rest of the book is full of lexicographical details that will fascinate writers, aspiring writers, and those who simply have a love for the English language.
Rating: 
Summary: Wrong Title
Review: When one picks up this book, one expects a story about the two men involved in the making of the Oxford Dictionary. One expects that because two men are in the title, two men will be the primary subject of the book. Yet the men are in the book only sporadically. What could have been an intriguiing story of how two men of unequal status came together to form the world's most comprehensive dictionary turns into a fact-fest. Simon Winchester does indeed get the facts straight. He tells exactly how the making of the dictionary came to be. He tells facts. But he doesn't show us exactly why we should care. His grammatically correct albeit at times pompous prose had me putting the book down several times. Yet the fact that I picked it up again shows that the book does indeed have merit. My objection is that the story promised isn't the story that's delivered. I also object to feeling talked down to and feeling as though once again, I'm forced to read a story about the superiority of the British empire. The tale did have some humorous moments in a way only British wit can make you smile, and the "real" story is intriguing enough. It's just not what I bargained for.
Rating:
Summary: Too little story, too much padding...
Review: The title of this book, "The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary" is far more intriguing than the book itself. Once you get the main idea, that one of the most important contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary was an American living in a mad-house, there's not much more to tell. And yet, Simon Winchester goes on to tell it for another 200 or so pages. The problem is that what sounds like a fascinating story really isn't. I mean, nothing much happens. Dr. W. C. Minor is delusional, murders a man, and is placed in a mental institution. Dr. Murray begins work on the Oxford Dictionary and makes a public request for volunteers to read through books and find examples of words. Dr. Minor responds to the advertisement from his cell, and is of great help. Time passes. Eventually, both men die of old age. End of story. Simon Winchester tries to fill pages with baseless supposition, along the lines of "Perhaps it was this early experience of watching young maidens bathing in the river that would eventually lead Dr. Minor to the confused mental state that would, ultimately, land him in a mental hospital." After a while, though, one can't help thinking, it would have been nice if this book had an actual story behind it. "Perhaps Dr. Minor had an affair with the widow of the man he murdered. Although there is no evidence to suggest that anything of the kind ever occurred..." What was interesting was seeing some of the early definitions of the words themselves, but that was a very small part of the book. Ultimately, "The Professor and the Madman" is a bit of fluff. There's enough information to make for a fascinating 5-page article, but it's extended and padded to fill a book. Only for the very bored...
Rating: 
Summary: The BEST book.
Review: It's an awesome book. It's a very very very fast read and when you're done you want to read more. Get it even if you're not interesting in Dictionary Making. I'm not sure if it's considered a classic (it's fairly new), but it should be.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful, strange, depressing and funny
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: brilliant historiography with wide appeal
Review: I first read of Simon Winchester in that incorrigibly elitist bibliographic "Who's Who" manual, "The Salon.com Guide to Contemporary Authors." Discovering that this 'chic'-sanctioned journalist and historian had written a book about the redoubtably academic Oxford English Dictionary perked my Anglophilic and scholastic inclinations, so I half-heartedly decided to buy "The Professor and the Madman," expecting to get sidetracked and swindled by a gnomic "Paris Review"-style PoMo narrative. Fortunately, I was completely mistaken in my literary apprehensions. Winchester is a compelling storyteller with an eye for the more bizarre events surrounding otherwise "normal" projects, in this case the compilation of the monumental OED. His unassuming prose paces well through the many twists and turns in the story's events. With a sympathetic edge to all characters involved, he relates his details to both enlighten and surprise the reader in every chapter. This book is a work of scholarship, a history lesson, and a thriller all in one. If you like this book, I also recommend Simon Worrall's "The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery."
Rating:
Summary: Depressing but fascinating
Review: There are probably thousands of stories behind the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. This is probably one of the stranger ones. According to "The Professor and the Madman", one of the major contributors to the OED, with over 10,000 entries to his credit, was a certifiable madman, locked up in an insane asylum just outside of London. What is even more incredible is that the people who put the first edition of the OED together were unaware of this for close to twenty years. Simon Winchester has put together a small gem of historical fact in the story of Dr. William Chester Minor, an American in England just after the Civil War, who killed a man for no apparent reason (at least, no reason any sane individual would understand) and was therefore confined to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for most of the rest of his life. How Minor came to be a major contributor to the OED is a story that must be read to be believed. Winchester has put together a compulsively readable account of both Minor and the history of the OED. The rating might have been higher but for Winchester's tendency to drone on at times about how each entry was put together.
Rating:
Summary: A Nourishing Little Vignette of History
Review: With The Professor and the Madman Simon Winchester takes his place among the finest narrative authors writing today. This is the fascinating story of Professor James Murray, the illustrious editor of the OED and one of his most prolific contributors, Dr. W.C. Minor, an American born surgeon committed to England's Broadmoor insane asylum. Reading more like a novel than a piece of historical research, Winchester's book is highly accessible to the non-specialist and can be read in one sitting. This is a meaty and nourishing little vignette of history. Some additional thoughts: 1. Winchester is one of those rare journalists with a knack for historical writing and story telling. Like I.F. Stone (The Trial of Socrates), his work has none of the hackneyed earmarks of the work of most newspapermen but shows glimmers of true scholarship and insightful analysis. Winchester is the History Professor I wish I had had as an undergraduate. 2. In recent years there has arisen almost a separate genre of popular non-fiction which focuses on the forgotten and unexplored nooks and corners of history. These are among the books I have stacked on my desk to be read as casual diversions from more serious reading. Miniature portraits rather than vast landscapes. Among these are such entertaining fare as Beethoven's Hair by Russell Martin, Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton and The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World by Larry Zuckerman. The Professor and the Madman is the best of this entertaining little genre. 3. Winchester's writing stands head and shoulders above the crowd. I wish he would try his hand at something more sweeping, like Thomas Cahill has done in his Hinges of History series.
Rating:
Summary: Very compassionate
Review: As many have noted before, this book is really a very long article that has been seriously padded to achieve book-length (it also suffers from the inclusion of horridly amateur illustrations, in lieu of what must be fascinating photos of the principal characters or the making of the OED). There are also some truly bizarre logical leaps, not the least of which being his insistence that there may be more than one protagonist in a story, based on a mis-understood quote of Dryden's (where Dyden uses the word in plural, clearly referring to more than one play). That said, the obvious compassion of the author and his excitement over the topic were infectious, and despite the book's obvious short-comings, I happily breezed through it in a day. I was particularly moved by the author's attention to the man that Minor murdered, refusing to let us forget the innocent man's death that started the story Winchester seeks to tell. For those of us easily wound up in history, mystery, and words, Winchester very deliberately reminds us of a man whose life was violently ended for no reason, and dedicates the book to him.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting glimps into a new world
Review: When at first blush you hear that this is a book about the making of a dictionary, you tend to be put off. If you can get past that initial reticence, you will be surprised, and rewarded with an interesting story. We take the dictionary for granted today, but someone had to start doing it, which did not happen until surprisingly recently in history. The fact that so much of one of the premier reference books in the English Language owes so much to an insane American Doctor just boggles the mind. The Sprightly paced, Winchester shows us the history of the OED without miring down as one would expect in a story of a reference book. It's a view into a piece of history that is relatively unknown to the general population, yet once you get into it, it is a fascinating tale.
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