Author: Simon Winchester Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780192805768 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
"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: 0060572000 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 514
Book Description
Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring the legendary earthquake and fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California in 1906 as well as its startling impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the fascinating subterranean processes that produced it—and almost certainly will cause it to strike again.
Author: Simon Winchester Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061807605 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
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: Simon Winchester Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 006207962X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 428
Book Description
“Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.” —Tom Brokaw Simon Winchester, 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: M. H. Boroson Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1940456452 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
“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: Andrew Quintman Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231535538 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
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: Janna Levin Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0307538036 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems sent shivers through Vienna’s intellectual circles and directly challenged Ludwig Wittgenstein’s dominant philosophy. Alan Turing’s mathematical genius helped him break the Nazi Enigma Code during WWII. Though they never met, their lives strangely mirrored one another—both were brilliant, and both met with tragic ends. Here, a mysterious narrator intertwines these parallel lives into a double helix of genius and anguish, wonderfully capturing not only two radiant, fragile minds but also the zeitgeist of the era.
Author: Simon Winchester Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062652575 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
“Another gem from one of the world’s justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people.” — Booklist (starred review) The revered New York Times bestselling 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. The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider. Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia. As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?
Author: Katherine Maud Elisabeth Murray Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300089196 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
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: Don Denevi Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1615922466 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 438
Book Description
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.
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Author: Simon Winchester
Author: Simon Winchester
Author: Simon Winchester
Author: Simon Winchester
Author: M. H. Boroson
Author: Andrew Quintman
Author: Janna Levin
Author: Simon Winchester
Author: Katherine Maud Elisabeth Murray
Author: Don Denevi