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"Winchester, Simon"
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Alice Behind Wonderland
In the summer of 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church in Oxford, Charles Dodgson--better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll--dressed the six-year-old Alice Liddell in ragamuffin's clothes, and then snapped the camera's shutter. In The Alice Behind Wonderland, Simon Winchester uses the famous photograph of Alice as the launching pad for an appreciative energetic and penetrating look at the inspiration behind, and the making of, one of the greatest classics of children's literature. Indeed, Winchester shows that Dodgson's love of photography deeply influenced his view of the world, helping to transform this shy and half-deaf mathematician into one of the world's best-loved observers of childhood. Much like the fictional Alice's world, as the photograph is subject to closer examination, 'Alice Liddell as The Beggar Maid' becomes curiouser and curiouser, capturing a moment during a golden afternoon that would endure forever. 'Alice Liddell as The Beggar Maid' was, in short, the muse that would inspire the creation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Deftly engaging with Dogson's published writings, private diaries, and photography, Winchester weaves together the poignant, turbulent, and entirely fascinating story behind Lewis Carroll and the making of his Alice. Acclaim for Simon Winchester \"An exceptionally engaging guideat home everywhere, ready for anything, full of gusto and seemingly omnivorous curiosity.\" --Pico Iyer, The New York Times Book Review \"A master at telling a complex story compellingly and lucidly.\" --USA Today \"Extraordinarily graceful.\" --Time \"Winchester is an exquisite writer and a deft anecdoteur.\" --Christopher Buckley \"A lyrical writer and an indefatigable researcher.\" --Newsweek.
eBook
When the earth shakes : earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis
\"'New York Times' bestselling author, explorer, journalist, and geologist Simon Winchester who's been shaken by earthquakes in New Zealand, skied through Greenland to help prove the theory of plate tectonics, and even charred the soles of his boots climbing a volcano looks at the science, technology, and societal impact of these inter-connected natural phenomena\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The men who united the States : America's explorers, inventors, eccentrics, and mavericks, and the creation of one nation, indivisible /
Illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings and ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
Book
The man who unveiled China
Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (1900-1995), the sole architect and author of what is universally acknowledged to be the greatest and most authoritative of all books about China in the English language, is now far better known in the country about which he wrote than in his homeland where he wrote it. This autumn marks 60 years since Needham began work on what would become his masterpiece: an enormous series of books entitled Science and Civilisation in China.
Journal Article
The professor and the madman : a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary
\"The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story - a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking.\" \"Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. He was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, fifty miles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray's offer was regularly-and mysteriously-refused.\" \"Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly ten thousand definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor-that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane-and locked up in Broadmoor, England's harshest asylum for criminal lunatics.\"--Jacket
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