The professor and the madman book review6/22/2023 And Winchester does a good job of teasing out the details of the lives of the two men, Murray and Minor, as he presents their dual biographies. Learning about how the process worked is worth the read. The compilation of the OED was a massive undertaking, spanning many decades. (I dug this one out for my plane ride on the way to a "girls’ weekend" in Chicago. So, once again, the TBR pile challenge comes to the rescue. I bought the book, inspired by the enthusiastic recommendations of the other Thanksgiving guest (although actually, he recommended The Map that Changed the World but I liked the idea of this book better.) And then it sat on my shelf for years. William Minor, an educated American Civil War surgeon, who supplied more than ten thousand quotations for the dictionary over the decades of its preparation–from within the confines of an asylum for the criminally insane. James Murray, the dedicated editor who devoted his life to the task. (Who doesn’t love the OED?) The professor was Dr. As evident from the title, it tells the story of how the OED came into being.
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