'The Professor and the Madman' by Simon WInchester

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Writing of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester (4.0)

Anyone appreciative of meaningful vocabulary will enjoy this book. Not only does it describe the making of the best-known English dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, the words used in so doing are delightfully apt and numerous. While not exactly crowd sourced ala Wikipedia, I was surprised to find how the OED staff went about getting volunteers to help find all the quotations for each word. One problem was interesting: many readers submitted quotations for very obscure words with few definitions, but few submitted ones for everyday words with many definitions (i.e. ‘art’). Lucky for us, none were ineffable. The book outlines the bio of the two men involved and how their lives intertwined, but also generously gives examples of engaging definitions throughout the chapters. It’s hard not to like a book that takes a staid subject such as dictionary writing and spices it up with murder and a lunatic asylum!