The Professor and the Madman und über 1 Million weitere Bücher verfügbar für Amazon Kindle . Erfahren Sie mehr


oder
Loggen Sie sich ein, um 1-Click® einzuschalten.
oder
Mit kostenloser Probeteilnahme bei Amazon Prime. Melden Sie sich während des Bestellvorgangs an. Erfahren Sie mehr
Alle Angebote
Möchten Sie verkaufen? Hier verkaufen
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.)
 
 
Beginnen Sie mit dem Lesen von The Professor and the Madman auf Ihrem Kindle in weniger als einer Minute.

Sie haben keinen Kindle? Hier kaufen oder eine gratis Kindle Lese-App herunterladen.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Simon Winchester
3.8 von 5 Sternen  Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (190 Kundenrezensionen)
Preis: EUR 11,80 kostenlose Lieferung. Siehe Details.
  Alle Preisangaben inkl. MwSt.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Auf Lager.
Verkauf und Versand durch Amazon.de. Geschenkverpackung verfügbar.
Nur noch 4 Stück auf Lager - jetzt bestellen.
Lieferung bis Dienstag, 5. Juni: Wählen Sie an der Kasse Morning-Express. Siehe Details.

Weitere Ausgaben

Amazon-Preis Neu ab Gebraucht ab
Kindle Edition EUR 7,53  
Bibliothekseinband EUR 17,99  
Taschenbuch EUR 11,80  
Audio CD, Audiobook, Ungekürzte Ausgabe EUR 13,99  

Wird oft zusammen gekauft

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.) + Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary + The Map That Changed the World: A Tale of Rocks, Ruin and Redemption
Preis für alle drei: EUR 33,51

Verfügbarkeit und Versanddetails anzeigen

Die ausgewählten Artikel zusammen kaufen
  • Auf Lager.
    Verkauf und Versand durch Amazon.de.
    Kostenlose Lieferung bei einem Bestellwert ab EUR 20. Details

  • Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary EUR 12,20

    Auf Lager.
    Verkauf und Versand durch Amazon.de.
    Kostenlose Lieferung bei einem Bestellwert ab EUR 20. Details

  • The Map That Changed the World: A Tale of Rocks, Ruin and Redemption EUR 9,51

    Auf Lager.
    Verkauf und Versand durch Amazon.de.
    Kostenlose Lieferung bei einem Bestellwert ab EUR 20. Details


Kunden, die diesen Artikel gekauft haben, kauften auch


Produktinformation


Mehr über den Autor

Simon Winchester
Entdecken Sie Bücher, lesen Sie über Autoren und mehr

Besuchen Sie die Seite von Simon Winchester auf Amazon

Produktbeschreibungen

Amazon.com

When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary put out a call during the late 19th century pleading for "men of letters" to provide help with their mammoth undertaking, hundreds of responses came forth. Some helpers, like Dr. W.C. Minor, provided literally thousands of entries to the editors. But Minor, an American expatriate in England and a Civil War veteran, was actually a certified lunatic who turned in his dictionary entries from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Simon Winchester has produced a mesmerizing coda to the deeply troubled Minor's life, a life that in one sense began with the senseless murder of an innocent British brewery worker that the deluded Minor believed was an assassin sent by one of his numerous "enemies."

Winchester also paints a rich portrait of the OED's leading light, Professor James Murray, who spent more than 40 years of his life on a project he would not see completed in his lifetime. Winchester traces the origins of the drive to create a "Big Dictionary" down through Murray and far back into the past; the result is a fascinating compact history of the English language (albeit admittedly more interesting to linguistics enthusiasts than historians or true crime buffs). That Murray and Minor, whose lives took such wildly disparate turns yet were united in their fierce love of language, were able to view one another as peers and foster a warm friendship is just one of the delicately turned subplots of this compelling book. --Tjames Madison -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Booklist

Distinguished journalist Winchester tells a marvelous, true story that few readers will have heard about. His narrative is based on official government files locked away for more than a century. As everyone knows, the Oxford English Dictionary is an essential library reference tool. The 12-volume OED took more than 70 years to produce, and one of its most distinguishing features is the copious quotations from published works to illustrate every shade of word usage. By the late 1890s the huge project was nearly half done, and the editor at the time, Professor James Murray, felt the need to meet and personally thank Dr. William Minor, with whom he had been in lengthy contact and who had contributed a lion's share of the quotations. As it turned out, Dr. Minor was an American surgeon who many years before had been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity but had been incarcerated in an English asylum ever since. The tale of their affiliation and friendship reads like a creatively conceived novel. Brad Hooper -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Welche anderen Artikel kaufen Kunden, nachdem sie diesen Artikel angesehen haben?


Tags, die Kunden mit diesem Produkt verbinden

 (Was ist das?)
Klicken Sie zum Suchen verwandter Artikel, Diskussionen oder Personen auf ein Tag.
 
(1)

 

Kundenrezensionen

Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen
2 von 2 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
"The Professor and the Madman" will not appeal to every reader. If you like lexicography, if you are interested in Victorian England, and if diseases of the mind fascinate you, then read this book. It is one of the strangest accounts that I have ever read. I devoured this book in one sitting. Winchester fascinates us with this story of the contribution that a convicted murderer named William Minor, who was confined to an asylum for the criminally insane, made towards the gargantuan Oxford English Dictionary. This book is written sparely and elegantly. It could easily have been a bloated tome, but Winchester pares the story down to its essentials. The cliche that truth is stranger than fiction is certainly borne out by this tale of obsession. I use the word "obsession" both in the sense of the paranoia that plagued William Minor during most of his life and the obsession to create one of the most ambitious and scholarly works of all time. Winchester does an admirable job of making "The Professor and the Madman" both accessible and intriguing.
War diese Rezension für Sie hilfreich?
1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Simon Winchester's "The Professor and the Madman" is a fascinating account of how an insane murderer made a remarkable contribution to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. But, while Winchester's book enjoys great success at the bookstores, America's Irish may find parts of it disturbing, if not offensive.

Dictionary-contributor and murderer Doctor William Minor's madness resulted from wartime trauma, theorizes Winchester. His scene-setting explanation recounts the history of America's Irish during the Civil War. As their casualties mounted and "rival" African-Americans were emancipated, the Irish began to desert the North's army. During the Battle of the Wilderness in May of 1864 they deserted in great numbers, according to Winchester. Amidst the ensuing carnage, Minor's commanders required the young assistant surgeon to fire-brand an Irishman's face with the letter "D" for deserter. This memory and delusions about revenge-seeking Irish Fenians haunted Minor in the following years. He was unable to escape them by moving to England, and in 1872 he shot an innocent passerby who he mistook for a pursuing Fenian. Her Majesty's government sentenced the clearly disturbed Minor to incarceration at the Broadmoor Asylum where he would await another extraordinary coincidence - his encounter with the Oxford English Dictionary.

There's one thing wrong with this story - apart from Minor being far from the only person in England and America obsessed with Irish goblins in 1872 - mass Irish desertions from the North's armies never happened.

"Back in the 1890s this charge was made and it elicited a sharp response from St. Clair Mulholland, an Irish-born soldier who commanded the 116th PA in the Irish Brigade. He contacted the head of the war department at that time and received an official response that the War Dept. had no statistics on which to base such a claim."

Contrary to the desertion stereotype, the Irish displayed a great deal of heroism during the Civil War. They were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in far greater numbers than any other foreign-born group. And in the year of the Battle of the Wilderness, 1864, their actions resulted in more of these awards than in any other Civil War year.

Congress awarded the Medal of Honor to more than 1500 soldiers and sailors for Civil War gallantry -- a sample of the fighting men so highly correlated with origins and combat deaths that it tells us a great deal about who fought for the North and when. And what it tells us about the Irish and other foreign-born soldiers, who made up a quarter of the North's army, is that they served as bravely, if not more so, throughout the war as any other Americans. Furthermore the Irish were represented in numbers consistent with their presence in the North's population, and, allowing for the demographic effects of the 1840's famine immigration, perhaps in greater numbers than should have been expected.

Data for the more than 300,000 New York State soldiers supports this analysis. Nearly half of those joining units organized at New York City were foreign-born, while units from the rest of the state had a much smaller immigrant presence. Remarkably, the combat mortality rates and Medal of Honor award rates for the city units are the same as for the upstate units. Contrary to its reputation for draft riot violence, New York City provided 43 percent of the state's army units and manpower. Consistent with this, city soldiers suffered 43 percent of state combat deaths and received 43 percent of the Medal of Honor awards.

Though Winchester contends that the Irish were more concerned with fighting "rival" African-Americans for the lowest rung on America's social ladder than fighting for the Union, the Irish were much more assimilated into American society than he realizes. Three of the North's four leading Civil War generals were raised in Irish-Catholic families: William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George Gordon Meade. So was Dennis Hart Mahan, West Point's guiding light for thirty years prior to the war. Mahan gave America the mathematical engineering of France, and a professional officer corps with the capability to organize industrial war against the South. Sherman's principal rival was his Irish-Catholic wife, the daughter of Thomas Ewing, Ohio's powerful senator. And though myth credits Joshua Chamberlain with saving the Union at Gettysburg's Little Round Top, Colonel Patrick Henry O'Rorke, an Irish-Catholic immigrant who graduated first in West Point's class of 1861, actually led the reinforcements and the charge that saved the day.

Doctor Minor's military records supplied by the National Archives indicate that he was in New Haven, Connecticut in May of 1864 and that he reported to a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia on May 17, 1864. It is indeed possible that he somehow made it to the Battle of the Wilderness, which took place in Virginia from May 5 to 7. Anything is possible for those who believe in leprechauns. For doubting Thomases like me, though, the probably apocryphal story of the branded Irish deserter who haunted William Minor would be more convincing if the soldier and his unit were identified. He remains virtually the only anonymous character in an otherwise meticulously documented story.

Englishman Simon Winchester is entitled to publish whatever he wishes, even if it amounts to recyling anti-immigrant myths from America's nativist 19th century. But it's not "a superb job of historical research," as Times columnist William Safire called it. And if Mr. Winchester ignored his sources in the matter of the Irish, as it so appears, it's not good journalism either. -- James F. McManus III

War diese Rezension für Sie hilfreich?
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
Ein höchst informatives Buch über die Entstehung des größten englischen Wörterbuchs, des OED. Neben schon bekannten Details werden doch Gräuel bezüglich Desertierer während des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs offenbar.
Vielleicht ist das spätere Verhalten des größten "Zulieferers"
zum Wörterbuch Murrays, des 'Madman' Dr. Minor,durch diese furchtbaren Ereignisse zu erklären.
Für Englisch-und Geschichtsliebhaber ein absolutes
"Muss"!
War diese Rezension für Sie hilfreich?
Die neuesten Kundenrezensionen
Sensationalized Version of a Gripping History
The Professor and the Madman is the yellow journalism version of the history of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Sir James Murray, Dr. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 13. August 2007 von Donald Mitchell
When you think you read it all something new pops up.
The book is well balanced between the history of the OED and the life and times of Dr. William Minor, (a major contributor). Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 17. August 2005 von bernie
The human mind shines through
This is a book I would not have read in printed form, but I liked the unabridged audio very much. The fact that WC Minor was so delusional that he could shoot someone by mistake,... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 28. Juli 2000 von "litlover"
Tradgedy, Triumph, and a lot of Learning
This was a book that was recommended to me by a friend who is interested in linguistics and the Oxford English Dictionary, and at first I was sure I would have no interest in the... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 16. Juli 2000 von Z. Blume
History with a Personal Touch
This is the story of three men, one a murder victim, the second a doctor-turned psychotic murderer, and the third a lexicographer, and the fascinating, sometimes bizarre, events... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 14. Juli 2000 von Michael Akard
Interesting dictionary history, but not a gripping story
I really enjoyed learning about how the Oxford English Dictionary was created, but thought the author's attempt at telling the story of The Professor and The Madman was clumsy. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 6. Juli 2000 veröffentlicht
Interesting for an article, too little for a book
This book, while fairly interesting in terms of plot, really only has enough material in it for a short article. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 1. Juli 2000 veröffentlicht
A Fascinating True Story in the Mould of The Elephant Man
I loved this book - The Professor and The Madman, aka The Surgeon of Crowthorne (In Australia, UK etc).

This is a true story that is stranger than fiction. Lesen Sie weiter...

Veröffentlicht am 30. Juni 2000 von Iain T White
Fascinating
I truly could not put this book down and I have recommended it to all my friends. What a convoluted and bizarre story about fascinating, brilliant men. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 28. Juni 2000 veröffentlicht
The department of redundancy department
Highly speculative. Some background on the OED (besides just the madman bit). I found the book a fountain of psychobabble and repeated stories tied together by (justified)... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 23. Juni 2000 von furnage
Kundenrezensionen suchen
Nur in den Rezensionen zu diesem Produkt suchen

Kunden diskutieren

Das Forum zu diesem Produkt
Diskussion Antworten Jüngster Beitrag
Noch keine Diskussionen

Fragen stellen, Meinungen austauschen, Einblicke gewinnen
Neue Diskussion starten
Thema:
Erster Beitrag:
Eingabe des Log-ins
 


Aktive Diskussionen in ähnlichen Foren
Kundendiskussionen durchsuchen
Alle Amazon-Diskussionen durchsuchen
   
Ähnliche Foren


Lieblingslisten

Legen Sie Ihre eigene Lieblingsliste an

Ähnliche Artikel finden


Anhand des Sachgebietes nach ähnlichen Produkten suchen:


Ihr Kommentar


Datenschutzerklärung von Amazon.de Versandbedingungen von Amazon.de Umtausch- & Rücknahme bei Amazon.de