Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Author of the Day: Simon Winchester


Simon Winchester writes lively histories and biographies, often using his own travels as a framework for the book. Whether he writes about volcanoes, the Oxford English Dictionary, China, earthquakes, or geography, Winchester's books are always entertaining.

Those I have read are in red; those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Here is the list, starting with his latest release:

The Alice Behind Wonderland

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece (reviewed here)

A Crack in the Edge of the World

Lonely Planet: Simon Winchester's Calcutta

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology

The Fracture Zone: My Return to the Balkans

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time

Pacific Nightmare (a novel)

Pacific Rising: The Emergence of a New World Culture

Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles

Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire

Prison Diary, Argentina: A Falklands Story

Their Noble Lordships: Class and Power in Modern Britain

American Heartbeat: Some Notes from a Midwestern Journey

In Holy Terror


NOTES

Photo: Simon Winchester at Dinosaur National Monument in the Uinta mountains on the border between Colorado and Utah, while researching his next book about America. Photo by Setsuko WInchester, used by permission.  

Last updated on April 19, 2012.

OTHER WINCHESTER FANS

If you have reviews of Winchester's books or other Winchester-related posts, please leave a comment with a link and I will list them here.

3 comments:

  1. I love this author! I've experienced his audiobooks, too, and he reads them: they are great. I've read Krakatoa and the Meaning of Everything and I own the audiobook of The Professor and the Madman but haven't had a chance to listen yet. Thanks for this great list of his works. I'm going to have to read these as well (whichever of them my library has.....)

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  2. Ah, The Professor and the Madman, that is why I knew that name. I guess I'll have to check out his other stuff too!

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  3. Yes, I really like the audio books that he reads himself. He is not the reader for Fracture Zone, but the guy happens to sound just like him!

    Professor and the Madman is still my favorite.

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