The Professor and the Madman

I am a fan of Simon Winchester. Ever since I read Krakatoa several years back I have found both his choice of subjects, and his writing style to be entertaining and enjoyable to read. The Professor and the Madman, about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was probably one of my most favorites ever. I read it two weekends ago, and was sort of mesmerized by it. I love words, probably in the same way that musicians love certain notes and melodies. And to read about them, how they are invented, how they are defined, how they change over the course of time, and finally how they were compiled,  ALL of them, into one book, was really interesting.
Interwoven into the more technical aspects of how the OED came into being are the lives of the Professor (James Murray) and the Madman (William Minor). The latter was by far more interesting having been a American and having served as a Captain in the Civil War, before accidentally murdering an innocent man on the streets of London. Minor was tormented by delusions which involved suffering nightly sexual abuses of all sorts and acts by people he was convinced lived in his floor. He was paranoid about the Irish stealing and taking his things, and very sexually fixated. (The man he murdered was, or so Minor thought, one of the men trying to steal from him in his sleep.) But besides these delusions, he was actually a very smart, well read, surgeon of all things! And so it ended up being that his knowledge and vast understanding of the English language was a huge help to the authors of the OED. It's a really bizarre story. It was like he knew he was crazy, but he could never get himself to believe it. On the one hand he could argue persuasively about the use, or uses of the word "about" with his friend James Murray the Professor, but then he actually thought there were people living the floor of his room and swore he could hear them, and that they molested him in his sleep. He could write elegant letters, read and understand books on all sorts of interesting subjects, and have as normal a conversation on daily things as you or I could, but then he was so utterly convinced of and haunted by his sexual delusions that (later in his life) actually cut off his own penis to prevent who knows what from happening while he was asleep!
It's remarkable how brilliant yet fragile the human brain can be. And truly frightening how many strange and specific ways it can go wrong.
The OED was a monumental achievement that took more than 30 years to complete. But it was worth every hour of work. To have documented and explained (and even have examples of use) of every word in the English language is an achievement almost impossible to imagine! We live in an era with internet and an answer for pretty much everything only a click or two away, but it wasn't always the case. At the time it was compiled the OED was as....monumental as the internet is today. Any word, any word you wanted to know was suddenly available, at your fingertips! How cool is that?
This was an excellent book! I would recommend it to anyone who likes a little history, a good story, and learning a thing or two about words.