The Professor And The Madman

Author : Simon Winchester
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780192805768
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Meaning of Everything written by Simon Winchester and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium -- the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it -- and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W.C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project -- a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivaled uber-dictionary. Book jacket."--Jacket.

Author : Simon Winchester
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062277456
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Crack in the Edge of the World written by Simon Winchester and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The international bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa vividly brings to life the 1906San 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. The quake resulted from a rupture in a part of the San Andreas fault, which lies underneath the earth's surface along the northern coast of California. Lasting little more than a minute, the earthquake wrecked 490 blocks, toppled a total of 25,000 buildings, broke open gas mains, cut off electric power lines throughout the Bay area, and effectively destroyed the gold rush capital that had stood there for a half century. Perhaps more significant than the tremors and rumbling, which affected a swatch of California more than 200 miles long, were the fires that took over the city for three days, leaving chaos and horror in its wake. The human tragedy included the deaths of upwards of 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities -- as well as his unique understanding of geology -- to this extraordinary event, exploring not only what happened in northern California in 1906 but what we have learned since about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place. But his achievement is even greater: he positions the quake's significance along the earth's geological timeline and shows the effect it had on the rest of twentieth-century California and American history. A Crack in the Edge of the World is the definitive account of the San Francisco earthquake. It is also a fascinating exploration of a legendary event that changed the way we look at the planet on which we live.

Author : Simon Winchester
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006207962X
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Men Who United the States written by Simon Winchester and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon Winchester, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Atlantic and The Professor and the Madman, delivers his first book about America: a fascinating popular history that illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings. 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, such as Lewis and Clark and the leaders of the Great Surveys; the builders of the first transcontinental telegraph and the powerful civil engineer behind the Interstate Highway System. He treks vast swaths of territory, from Pittsburgh to Portland, Rochester to San Francisco, Seattle to Anchorage, introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States. Throughout, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree. Featuring 32 illustrations throughout the text, The Men Who United the States is a fresh look at the way in which the most powerful nation on earth came together.

Author : Andrew Quintman
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231535538
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Yogin and the Madman written by Andrew Quintman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052–1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics.

Author : Simon Winchester
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061807605
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Professor and the Madman written by Simon Winchester and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book The Professor and the Madman 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 making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, was stunned to discover that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. But their surprise would pale in comparison to what they were about to discover when the committee insisted on honoring him. For Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane. Masterfully researched and eloquently written, The Professor and the Madman “is the linguistic detective story of the decade.” (William Safire, New York Times Magazine) This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Author : M. H. Boroson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1940456452
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Girl with Ghost Eyes written by M. H. Boroson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Girl with Ghost Eyes is a fun, fun read. Martial arts and Asian magic set in Old San Francisco make for a fresh take on urban fantasy, a wonderful story that kept me up late to finish.” —#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Briggs It’s the end of the nineteenth century in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and ghost hunters from the Maoshan traditions of Daoism keep malevolent spiritual forces at bay. Li-lin, the daughter of a renowned Daoshi exorcist, is a young widow burdened with yin eyes—the unique ability to see the spirit world. Her spiritual visions and the death of her husband bring shame to Li-lin and her father—and shame is not something this immigrant family can afford. When a sorcerer cripples her father, terrible plans are set in motion, and only Li-lin can stop them. To aid her are her martial arts and a peachwood sword, her burning paper talismans, and a wisecracking spirit in the form of a human eyeball tucked away in her pocket. Navigating the dangerous alleys and backrooms of a male-dominated Chinatown, Li-lin must confront evil spirits, gangsters, and soulstealers before the sorcerer’s ritual summons an ancient evil that could burn Chinatown to the ground. With a rich and inventive historical setting, nonstop martial arts action, authentic Chinese magic, and bizarre monsters from Asian folklore, The Girl with Ghost Eyes is also the poignant story of a young immigrant searching to find her place beside the long shadow of a demanding father and the stigma of widowhood. In a Chinatown caught between tradition and modernity, one woman may be the key to holding everything together. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Author : Katherine Maud Elisabeth Murray
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300089196
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Caught in the Web of Words written by Katherine Maud Elisabeth Murray and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and celebrated biography describes how a largely self-educated boy from a small village in Scotland entered the world of scholarship and became the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and a great lexicographer. It also provides an absorbing account of how the dictionary was written, the personalities of the people working on it, and the endless difficulties that nearly led to the whole enterprise being abandoned. "It is a magnificent story of a magnificent man, one of the finest biographies of the twentieth century, as its subject was one of the finest human beings of the nineteenth." --Anthony Burgess "A moving and dramatic story . . . sometimes tragic, often comic, ultimately triumphant." --Times (London) "A biography that possesses many of the virtues of James Murray himself--grace, humor, intelligence, curiosity, and scholarship." --Time "In her vivid biography, Murray's granddaughter brings his remarkable personality to life, and provides an unexpectedly fascinating account of the OED's long and difficult birth." --Times Literary Supplement "A gripping, engaging story; endearing, too. The daily round of a big Victorian family, with its jokes, games, and treasured seaside holidays, is entrancingly evoked." --Sunday Times (London)

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781912559121
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mentored by a Madman written by and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Stephen N. Joffe
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1491874465
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Andreas Vesalius written by Stephen N. Joffe and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andreas Vesalius 1514-1564 By Stephen N. Joffe, M.D. Vesalius was the foremost pioneer of modern anatomy. Born in Brussels, he came from a family of physicians. Educated in Louvain, he studied medicine in Montpelier and Paris, returning to Louvain to teach anatomy. In 1535 he went to France to be an army surgeon to King Charles V and two years later became a professor of anatomy in Padua, Italy. Subsequently he became a physician to the court of Philip II of Spain. On a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he received a call to return to Padua to occupy chair of Fallopius. In a storm leading to a shipwreck and subsequent death on the Isle of Zante, Vesalius was buried there in an unmarked grave in 1564. This marked the end of the ‘prince of anatomy.’ Vesalius’ book De Humani Corporus Fabrica published in Basel in 1543, contributes one of the greatest treasures of western civilization and culture. With its companion volume the Epitome, began the modern observational science and research.

Author : Don Denevi
Publisher : Prometheus Books
ISBN 13 : 1615922466
Total Pages : 438 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Into the Minds of Madmen written by Don Denevi and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a fascinating account, full of quiet heroics and grisly criminal details, the authors describe the difficult work of the tireless professionals who have devoted their careers to investigating and analyzing the deeds and personalities of the macabre psychopaths who haunt the nation's streets.