The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom

by Simon Winchester

Book Overview

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"--New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"--Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.

No cloistered don, this tall,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060884592
• ISBN13: 9780060884598
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and informative

Excellent historical account of an exceptional individual / scientist / scholar - amazing accomplishments and travel experiences. Nicely written, interesting and informative.

Sinophilia orgy

I have decided to elevate Joseph Needham to the ranks of my primary heroes. That means he joins Vinegar Joe Stilwell (the American General who tried to teach Chiang Kai Shek how to run an army so that he might win a war; he failed, as you probably know) and Alfred Russell Wallace (the man who found that evolution works via natural selection, but had a marketing disadvantage to his colleague Charles Darwin; the theory is called Darwinism, not Wallacism, as you might know). Needham wrote close to 20000 pages on the history of Chinese science and civilization, he was a most amazing alround scientist. The 'book', or should we call it a library, is unsurpassed in his subject - but have you ever heard of it? I mean you, the non-expert on China. Let me know. I suspect very few people outside an inner circle ever heard of it. Winchester has published quite a few books on diverse subjects. I mainly like his travel books: first a walk through South Korea, then a ship ride up the Yangzi. Given that he is an experienced travel writer, I am a bit puzzled by some of his geographical gaffes: flying over the hump from India to Kunming, the connection from British India to National China during WW2, W. claims the plane had to cross glaciers. Well, not likely. Better look it up on a map. Glacial melting can't have progressed that much since then. Or: Needham's first stop in China is Kunming, where he allegedly watches the sun set over the distant Tibetan hills on his first evening after arriving. Odd in view of the hundreds km distance from Kunming to Tibet and the fact that the city has its own hills to the West. Apart from Needham's scientific formidability, he was also a prime specimen of British excentricity (they allow every excentricity in Cambridge, as long as it doesn't frighten the horses): a biochemist with highest distinctions early on, married to a brillant colleague, a freethinker, nudist, socialist, folk dancer, playboy, leftist activist, member of the left establishment, language genius, lay preacher (yes, he was also religious). And then: he meets his lifetime love, a Chinese colleague from Nanjing (whom he will marry half a century later), who makes him learn the language. He manages to get an assignment with the Foreign Service during WW2 and moves to Chongqing in 43, as Counsellor to the Embassy. That's the beginning of the end. The man starts researching and writing... 20 volumes? He is obsessed with Chinese history and goes on his decade long rampage. As implied above, he was somewhat of a political fool, but it's hard for me to begrudge him that. Not everybody looked at it so generously though. For a while he had a key position in UNESCO, in charge of science (he put the S into UNECO), when Julian Huxley was the DG. The US pushed him out for his communist sympathies. Worse was to come: he let himself be misused by China for Cold War propaganda in connection with the Korean War, as head of an 'independant' commission that was to investigate a

Winchester continues to please

Another book well done by Simon Winchester. The large-print version was a joy to read.

Superb history in the Winchester way

Simon Winchester's forte is creating a microscopic view of events. They may be great events, like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 or events that but for his eye might have slipped unnoticed into the annals of history, like the story of the madman and the Professor. With this story of the life and work of Joseph Needham, Winchester once again works his very special magic. Without Winchester, it is most likely that only a diminishing number of academics would know of Needham at all, much less the results of his work, a comprehensive history of Chinese scientific acheivements. Instead Winchester tells us the story of an extraordinary, eccentric Englishman who became a Professor at Cambridge. A socialist, if not a Communist, Winchester married, but agreed with his wife that their relationship would be open. Thus, Needham added to the relationship a Chinese mistress who was a part of his and his wife's lives for the next 50-some years. It is his mistress, Gwei-djen, a competent scientist in her own right, who awakens in Needham an interest in China. Needham's interest in China - he taught himself to write and speak Mandarin - brings him an appointment in WWII to go to China and be a liason between British and Chinese institutions of learning. Bear in mind that much of China was occupied by Japan at this time. Needham did much more than was requested of him and the result was ther idea of creating a masterwork that would record the history of China's scientific invention, which was much greater and impressive than was commonly believed in the West at the time. Thus began Needham's multi-volume masterpiece which is still considered a classic today. Winchester's genius is first being able to spot the seed of a good story, in this case acquiring a single volume of Needham's "Science and Civilisation [sic] In China". Next is Winchester's ability and willingness to research, which has been evident in all his books. It is indeed the glue that makes his compelling stories possible. No detail is to small, apparently, to escape Winchester's scrutiny. One can only imagine how much Winchester is forced to leave out. Finally, Winchester is a superb, mellifluous writer. He is one of the few today who can (and does) use almost archaic or very rarely used words properly to make his point. Unlike the poseurs writing in some magazines, Winchester uses the words properly and not merely in an attempt to impress. It is remarkable that Winchester was able to fully describe Needham's life in a mere 265 pages. Other authors might have taken several hundred more, but Winchester has a laudable economy of style. Joseph Needham was certainly a very interesting man who led a very interesting life, but without Simon Winchester, Needham most likely would have slipped into oblivion in the not very distant future. I have few criticisms of this book. I found one editing error in the book, a near-miracle these days, where Winchester refers to the use of cho

4th biography

Simon Winchester certainly has the creative power to immortalize anyone or thing he writes about, and so it is with the life of Joseph Needham (1900-1995), a Cambridge scholar polymath. Needham is probably obscure to most people, but among his Don peers he is a legendary as the writer of a massive encyclopedia on Chinese science and civilization designed to answer that great question: Why was China the mother lode of scientific and cultural innovation for so long, and why did it come to a stop by the 15th century - why didn't the Industrial revolution happen in China? At one point China was making 15 great innovations per century (paper, compass, stirrup, etc..), according to Needham, but then the country stagnated and for the last 500 years or so had a reputation for backwardness and poverty. Similar to Jared Diamond's "Yali Question" (why did Europe have "cargo" and Yali didn't?), Needham set out to find answers by cataloging the history of Chinese innovation. He created a massive multi-volume encyclopedia of such prodigious learning, value and length it has been compared with James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, or Sidney Lee and the Dictionary of National Biography. I've now read all four of Winchesters biographies (The Professor and the Madman (1998), The Map That Changed the World (2001), The Meaning of Everything (2003)) and I would rank "China" as good as 'The Meaning', not as good as 'Professor' and better than "Map". However Winchester has done something different this time and I hope he builds on it in the future, he has made the subject relevant on a global level - the rise of China and discovery of its past history and importance. More than a well-told and fascinating story of an eccentric English professor rescued from the obscurity of the archives, 'The Man Who Loved China' in a way is about the bigger picture of the rise and future of the largest nation on Earth, one of the central events of the 21st century.