Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED began in 1857, it was one of the most …

Simon Winchester's brilliant chronicle of the destruction of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 charts the birth of our modern world. He tells the story of the unrecognized genius who beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution; of Samuel Morse, his code and how rubber allowed the world to talk; of Alfred …

The Map that Changed the World is a book by Simon Winchester about English geologist William Smith and his great achievement, the first geological map of England and Wales. Smith's was the first national-scale geological map, and by far the most accurate of its time. His pivotal insights were that each local sequence …

The Meaning of Everything is a 2003 book by Simon Winchester. It concerns the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary under the editorship of James Murray and others, one aspect of which Winchester had previously written about in The Surgeon of Crowthorne.

A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 is a book by Simon Winchester.

Outposts, Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire is a book by Simon Winchester. It details his travels to each of the remaining dependencies of the British Empire and was first published in 1985 under the title The Sun Never Sets: Travels to the Remaining Outposts of the British Empire. It was …

The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time is a book by Simon Winchester. It details his travels up the Yangtze river in China and was first published in 1996. Viewing an ancient Chinese painting scroll drawn by Wang Hui gives the author the inspiration on how to structure …

Korea, A Walk Through the Land of Miracles is a book by Simon Winchester. He recounts his experience walking across South Korea, from Jeju in the south to the DMZ in the north, roughly following a route originally taken by a group of Dutch sailors, reportedly the first Europeans to visit Korea. The book makes general …