The Professor and the Madman

The Professor and the Madman - Simon Winchester

This is short readable book tells the story of how two scholars worked to make the Oxford English Dictionary the towering monument to our native language that it is. 

The achievement of the OED is that it includes all word definitions and provides example quotations that would show how the word has changed through time. The work involved reading hundreds of old tomes to locate suitable quotations. 

James Murray was the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. William Chester Minor contributed thousands of word quotations despite the fact that he was an inmate in an asylum for the criminally insane. 

A story of greatness and sadness, of adversity and triumph, a must for people who like words and reading.