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Title: The Man Who Made Lists
ISBN: B001BSSI8Q
Author:
Joshua Kendall
Publicate Date: 2008-03-13
Publish: 2008-03-13
List Price: $25.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $4.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $5.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Disappointing
Entry Word:
disappoint
Function:
verb
Text: to fall short in satisfying the expectation or hope ofSynonyms: cheat, dissatisfy, fail, let down
I thought it best to use Roget's own words to express how I felt about this book. It's like a McBio. There is so much left out or unexplained and it isn't till you read the acknowledgments at the end of the book do you find out that the author didn't mean the book to be a scholarly work.
Well what did he mean? He also then admits that "where primary source material was lacking, I offer my best approximation of specific details".
In other words he made them up.
OK the biggest failing of the book is that it is non-sequential which I think is a poor tribute to a man who spent his life trying to bring order and classification to everything in life. Kendall has a habit of digressing to another period for two or three paragraphs and then going back to where he was; so that you go from the 1820s to the 1840s and back
again. Well he gave it a good try and I bet he really tried his best (well I can't prove it but that's the impression I get) but it wasn't good enough.
Zeb Kantrowitz
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2: The Man Who Made Lists
Couldn't put the book down. Peter Roget's life was fascinating, there were many historical facts intertwined that made the book an even more interesting read.
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3: Boring
I picked this one out because I loved The Professor and the Madman and thought the story of thesaurus-making might be similarly interesting.
It's not.
In fact, I bailed about 1/3 of the way through. The Man Who Made Lists turns out to be a fairly average biography with lots of amateur psychology and tales of young Roget's early life. His family was prone to depression and madness, his mother was clingy and lived her life through him (Behind every great man is a needy mother?) and etc. Pretty much the usual stuff, and not terribly well told. Oh, the prose is good enough, at least I didn't notice any glaring errors, but the author utterly failed to make me care at all about Roget or his list making.
Pity.
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4: Interesting subject, poorly executed
Interesting book abut the Peter Roget, the creator of the ubiquitous Thesaurus, but it is a dry read, jumps around. At times the book feels as if it were written by the Peter Roget it describes: emotionally absent the author simply narrates events in Roget's life.
In the hands of a more skilled writer like Eric Larson this would have been a most excellent book. Like other reviewers have said, finishing it was a struggle, which I did out of interest purely in the subject matter.
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5: Credible biography of a fascinating figure
[review of first hardcover edition]
A good utilitarian biography about a figure in history whose contributions are little thought about today. Roget, who created the Thesaurus at a time when there was nothing close to it and the need was great, also invented the modern slide rule led major scientific societies, and contributed to the natural sciences. A good handling of an unusual man, and well worth the time to learn about the man. My only real complaint is that Kendall seems to apply a 21st century sense of judgement on Roget's relationships (and difficulties therein). This sense may be somewhat due to the lack of cited evidence when such opinions are interjected.
Still, a recommended read for a word maven, list keeper, organizer, or just to fill in a hole in one's knowledge of the movers and shakers of the early days of what became modern science.
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