The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester
The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester
1 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Man Who Loved China

Author: Simon Winchester

Narrator: Simon Winchester

Unabridged: 9 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 05/06/2008


Synopsis

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, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair.He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people.After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself great—related by one of the world's inimitable storytellers.

About Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on March 08, 2023

He decided initially to make a great historical list, a list of every mechanical invention and abstract idea—the building blocks of modern world civilization—that had been first conceived and made in China. If he could managed to establish a flawless catalog of just what the Chinese had created......more

Goodreads review by Jim on February 06, 2023

A biography of a man who devoted his life to things Chinese, Joseph Needham. One of the ancients said a full life, like a full day, is long enough. When Needham died in his early 90s, two days after he came to work his usual full day in the library, he went to a long-deserved rest. Needham (1900-19......more

Goodreads review by Lynne on September 25, 2018

I cannot recall when I last felt as passionate about a book as I do with this spellbinding work by Simon Winchester. I am also passionate about the amazing life of Joseph Needham, an Englishman who was born at the end of the Victorian era in 1900, who rose to such splendid heights in academia, fell......more

Goodreads review by Lois on November 23, 2022

In mulling over the Kindle page for The Professor and the Madman, Winchester's more famous book, my eye was caught by the entry for this one. I'd first encountered Needham's work on a library shelf in my youth, when it was many fewer volumes, 3 or 6 maybe -- I remember the covers were black, at abou......more

Goodreads review by Riku on June 04, 2015

Great background reading for anyone contemplating the epic task of taking on the fifteen (and more) volumes of Science and Civilisation in China -- one the greatest compendiums of knowledge, a supreme feat of imagination and will power, and one of the most lasting bridges built between the east and......more