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The Professor and the Madman
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
Critic reviews
"The linguistic detective story of the decade." (New York Times Magazine)
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What listeners say about The Professor and the Madman
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jerry
- 07-07-03
Perfect example of a quality audible book.
Simon Winchester presents us with an amazing story about a piece of history that I would have never considered interesting or significant. The accomplishment of the combined efforts of the two main characters Minor & Murray added to scores of other volunteers is one if not the greatest achievement in the history of the English language.
The story is presented in a very logical yet unassuming manner, and maybe the perfect example of an audible book selection. The narrators voice is crisp, clear, and expressive.
Listen, enjoy, and recommend to a friend.
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126 people found this helpful
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- Angela Rhodes
- 10-12-12
Reads like a psychological thriller!
You may be thinking, "How good can a book about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary really be?" The answer is, amazing! Far from dull or boring, this historical work has the edge-of-your-seat feel of a psychological thriller.
This is the story of two very different men who come together to help create the Oxford English Dictionary. Editor James Murray has a revolutionary idea: call upon volunteers to help build the massive collection of words. One volunteer stands out among the others for the quality and quantity of his submissions. This volunteer is Dr. William Chester Minor, an inmate at an institution for the criminally insane. Through their shared passion for the dictionary, the men form a friendship that transcends Minor's past, his insantiy and even the dictionary itself.
What I love about this book is its message of hope. Even for a person locked away in a mental institution, life can have purpose and meaning. Lifelong friendships can be formed. I admired Murray for his ability to see beyond Minor's past and present. I related to Minor for the tenacious way he clung to the dictionary, allowing it to become a life preserver keeping him afloat in the dark waters of his insanity.
Enhancing the experience of this book is the fact that it is narrated by the author, Simon Winchester. Winchester knows his material better than any other reader could, and he delivers it with heart and feeling.
ADDED BONUS: At the end of the book you are treated to an interview with Mr. Winchester, who talks about Murray, Minor, their friendship and the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary.
This listening experience is not to be missed!
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83 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Karen
- 06-02-03
or How I Spent My Summer(s) in the Asylum
A book about encyclopaedia and words is interesting? Actually, quite. The foibles we encounter in humanity color the texture of our society, morality, education and social progress. Believe it or not, an example of this is richly portrayed in The Professor and the Madman. A truly engaging piece of work, well researched and delivered with wit and grace. I only rated this a 3-4 because I have happened to listen to some truly remarkable books recently so I've tightened up my ratings all around. Nonetheless, highly recommended (I went out and bought the hardcover book as well).
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74 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Alison
- 10-03-06
Engaging, till d?nouement
This engaging view of the creation of the OED and one of its most fascinating contributors William Minor was extremely enjoyable until about 3/4 of the way through the book. However, when Minor stops his work for the OED and leaves England to return to America, the book turns to armchair clinician speculation about Minor's retroactive diagnosis, mental ilness and society,the mixed blessing of medication, etc. Personally i found this part *much* less fun that the wonderfully researched history of the OED. Though i was initially leery of 'read by the author" Winchester does a great job as a narrator. Interesting bonuses include author commentary on researching the book and an recorded interview with both Winchester and the current editor of the OED. In short, wishing for 3.5 stars.
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59 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jo
- 06-06-07
Great story, well told
This is a terrific story with a great narration by the author. If you are a history, mystery or non-fiction buff, you will find this book first rate. I'm off to check out the rest of his titles. I hope they are on par with this one.
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56 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kaeli
- 01-13-08
Probably the best way to read this book
Who would have thought that the writing of a dictionary could be so interesting?
Winchester takes the reader on a journey through many parallel histories-the history of dictionaries, the American Civil War, the history of some poor neighborhoods in London, and the story of three men who could easily have been forgotten. Murray, Minor, and Merrett (I think we can all be forgiven for getting them mixed up a couple of times while reading this) are each treated as interesting characters in this book, with their life stories explained. The author also puts to rest of the apocryphal tales that sprung up over this incident, including the story that opens his book.
The author also does an excellent job of remind the reader several times that, while a great debt is to be paid Minor for all his work on the dictionary, it came at the cost of a man's life.
This is a well-written book, scholarly without being pedantic. The author is the narrator and makes it a really interesting journey to join the author on. Provided the reader enjoys 19th century history, a British tone, and dictionaries, this is an enjoyable read. If any of those don't pique your interest, you'll wonder why anyone would bother reading past chapter 4.
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53 people found this helpful
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Overall
- nancy udell
- 02-25-04
A delightful work
Simon Winchester is delightful and engaging, intelligent and insightful. This is a wonderful read (listen). I loved his understated irony and his many flashes of brilliant insight into human nature and history, not to mention attention to detail without being pedantic at all. Winchester brings a surprisingly spiritual point of view to this surprising and touching story. The only disappointment is the interview with the current editor of the OED who shows himself a bore- far outclassed by Winchester's nuance.
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47 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Andrew
- 07-15-08
very enjoyable
I first heard of this from C-Span Book TV, and very much enjoyed it. Especially as an audio book because of the authors narration. Mr Winchester has a wonderful english accent. It's a compelling story that he is obviously fond of. Not only is it an interesting true story from Victorian England, it's like finding a memoir in an favorite aunts attic. The payoff is the interview Winchester has with the current editor of the O.E.D. at the end. I've replayed it several times.
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43 people found this helpful
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- Ilinca
- 12-10-13
fascinating little thing
**some spoilers ahead**
It's a rather flimsy, but thoroughly enjoyable little incursion into the story of William Chester Minor, one of the most important contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary. The relevant arc starts with him as a surgeon in the Union Army and ends with his death back in the States.
I call it flimsy because it's only interesting or important in the sense that we all like to pry into the hidden lives of celebrities, and this touches that exact chord.
It is, nevertheless, fascinating. Minor served during the Civil War and, the theory goes, had a crucial moment when he was forced to brand an Irish deserter. We don't know that this is what caused his sexual obsessions (wouldn't it be weird if it did), but it was almost certainly what caused his belief that Irish men were constantly after him, invading his room at night and performing strange rituals on him. Increasingly erratic, sexually obsessed and paranoid, he was admitted to a lunatic asylum, which - as happened more often than not in those days - did nothing to cure or improve his condition. He left for England, where, one might almost say "in due course", he shot a man and was then incarcerated, in a modern move, at the Broadmoor asylum. And here he was to stay for over 30 years, settling into very comfortable quarters and carrying on with the exact same paranoid delusions about Irish men springing up from the floorboards at night and taking him to various brothels where he was forced to perform shameful sexual acts on girls. Nighttime delusions notwithstanding, he also managed to accumulate an impressive collection of books and contribute a huge number of entries and quotations to the OED, while at some point also cutting off his penis to punish himself for compulsive masturbation.
The book is also interesting in its tangential details about Broadmoor and the making of the OED. All in all, as I said, flimsy but interesting.
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- Matthew
- 09-15-16
Brilliant \ adj.\ exceptionally clever or talented
The Good – While I cannot say a book such as this is great, I can say this book is genuinely very good. Hence, four of five stars overall. This book sat lingering in my wish list for months while I poured through numerous books about various historical, scientific and other nonfiction topics. Then, I took another listen to the sample after being frustrated by a previous book. I was yearning to some learning and this seemed like it would do the job. It did. I finished this book in just over a day and a half. I did not want to put it down.
The Not So Good – It was too short for me although I’m not sure what could or should have been added. So that’s simply me being querulous. I’m also not a big fan of the author interview at the end of the book, but I’ve never been a fan of author interviews in any regard so that is admittedly a biased opinion.
The Bad – Nothing \ pronoun \ not anything; no single thing; \ they found nothing wrong
The Narration – Sublime \ adjective \ of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.
The Overall - I truly enjoyed this book and didn’t want it to end. I learned many things, but most importantly I gained a new appreciation for the English language and how the original internet worked; paper, pen, envelope, post. We live in such an instant society today that this book made me appreciate the written word again. An ironic epiphany given that I’m listening so I can multitask which I cannot do when I read. If you’re a hardcore book reader/listener or you love learning new things, you need this book in your library. I’m off to try another book by Simon Winchester and to purchase a hardcopy of the OED and stop using Google for word definitions.
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From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary.
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A New Appreciation
- By Donald on 11-01-04
By: Simon Winchester
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Alice Behind Wonderland
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London. Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image - as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation - as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature.
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Not Long Enough
- By thefrogman on 06-18-12
By: Simon Winchester
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The Map That Changed the World
- William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the earth - and a central plank of established Christian religion - on its head. He noticed that the rocks he was excavating were arranged in layers; more important, he could see quite clearly that the fossils found in one layer were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany.
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Who knew rocks could be so deceptive?
- By Jody R. Nathan on 11-09-04
By: Simon Winchester
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Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
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Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
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The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
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Somewhat less than perfect
- By enya keshet on 06-19-18
By: Simon Winchester
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A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
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7 Hours and 45 minutes . . .
- By Tim on 12-09-05
By: Simon Winchester
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The Meaning of Everything
- The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary.
-
-
A New Appreciation
- By Donald on 11-01-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Alice Behind Wonderland
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London. Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image - as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation - as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature.
-
-
Not Long Enough
- By thefrogman on 06-18-12
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Map That Changed the World
- William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the earth - and a central plank of established Christian religion - on its head. He noticed that the rocks he was excavating were arranged in layers; more important, he could see quite clearly that the fossils found in one layer were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany.
-
-
Who knew rocks could be so deceptive?
- By Jody R. Nathan on 11-09-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
-
-
Somewhat less than perfect
- By enya keshet on 06-19-18
By: Simon Winchester
-
A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
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7 Hours and 45 minutes . . .
- By Tim on 12-09-05
By: Simon Winchester
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The Man Who Loved China
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire.
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turn your watch back 70 years
- By Andy on 05-22-08
By: Simon Winchester
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The End of the River
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 1 hr and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When it comes to climate-change-inspired threats, it is rising sea levels we hear most about. But if the oceans are, as Herman Melville put it, “the tide-beating heart of the Earth”, rivers are its circulatory system. In the United States, there is no river more storied, symbolic, and vital than the Mississippi, and none, to use Mark Twain’s word, more lawless. The struggle to control it has been going on nearly as long as there has been human civilization on its banks, and the attendant drama and dangers have been memorialized by many writers.
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Excellent
- By rattyaddy on 03-30-23
By: Simon Winchester
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Land
- How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
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Audiobook Version is the Best!
- By semarla on 01-31-21
By: Simon Winchester
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The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By reader on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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Destiny of the Republic
- A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
- By: Candice Millard
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil.
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Marvelous, Magnificent, Millard
- By Mel on 02-08-12
By: Candice Millard