Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary » (Unabridged, 6 CDs, 6 hrs. 30 min.)

Journalist Simon Winchester had already published a list of travel and historical titles before a footnote in a book about dictionary-making led him to his tale of a prolific contributor to the gargantuan Oxford English Dictionary. That book, The Professor and the Madman, became a surprise hit -- and made Winchester a leading practitioner of what The New York Times calls cocktail-party science.

Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

Economist

An extraordinary tale, and Simon Winchester could not have told it better. . . . [He] has written a splendid book.

1: The Dead of Night in Lambeth Marsh

2: The Man Who Taught Latin to Cattle

3: The Madness of War

4: Gathering Earth's Daughters

5: The Big Dictionary Conceived

6: The Scholar in Cell Block Two

7: Entering the Lists

8: Annulated, Art, Brick-Tea, Buckwheat

9: The Meeting of Minds

10: The Unkindest Cut

11: Then Only the Monuments

Postscript

Author's Note

Acknowledgments

Suggestions for Further Reading