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

The title says it all, and the author delivers it. Fantastic book.

An interesting tale behind the creation and legacy of the Oxford English Dictionary. I feel like the tale dragged a bit in the beginning while it set up the scene, but the middle and end of the book made up for it. (view spoiler)[I ultimately came away from the book feeling like Minor was treated terribly in his late years, both by the institution he spent much of his life in, and then later the institution he ended up in in the States. This is largely due to the misunderstanding of mental diseases in his era, but in some respects conditions haven't improved much today. (hide spoiler)]

Ughhhhhhh okay. This book had a LOT of I interesting stuff about philology and it’s fascinating to me to think about the act and purpose of actually compiling a dictionary especially the first dictionaries like. Whatttt that’s so thrilling to me.... but the writing leaves a bit to be desired. It’s fun that there’s such a wide vocabulary in the book but some of the stuff that he writes is.... gross. Honestly not a good book. The fun dictionary stuff was not nearly enough to justify the novelization of the lives of a few of the men involved in the dictionary situation. Like, loved the actual history stuff but the biographical stuff was over embellished and in some cases just full on bad storytelling. Once it gets to a point where we are exploring the history of mental illness I was absolutely over it. I’m glad I learned some stuff about dictionary history but this book was not worth it!!

3 stars The title pretty much sums up the story. If you like QI you would probably like this as it's 'quite interesting'.

I knew I would love this book and it did not disappoint. Winchester has the ability to weave together a compelling narrative in his books and he does it once again here. I loved the bifurcated focus between the insanity of Dr. Minor, including the unsatisfying yet all to real lack of resolution to just what caused his paranoia, and Dr. Murrey's life long work with the fantastic OED. I highly recommend this book to historians and logophiles alike.

As an English major, the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary has always fascinated me, but this particular little piece of history about the madman who much assisted its writing was unfamiliar and I rather enjoyed learning more about such a monumental task. However, I should have stuck to the Wikipedia articles, at least I would have been less bored. I wasn't charmed at all by this book, and although I learned some new things, I lost interest half-way through.