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| The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom | 
 enlarge | Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 4354
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0060884592
Dewey Decimal Number: 509.2
EAN: 9780060884598
ASIN: 0060884592
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Intro to Needham's life, not much more; errors/overstatements uncritically accepted June 7, 2008
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
Let me get to the second half of my title first, as the heart of appreciation of Joseph Needham is his rehabilitation, if you will, of Chinese "firsts" in scientific, technical and cultural discoveries and inventions.
Winchester lists several of these on page 8, and one more later in the book. However, some of them are questionable, at least, as Chinese "firsts."
Specifically, that's chess, the stirrup, the crossbow and the flamethrower.
Majority of historians (which Winchester one-quarter acknowledges later in the book) stand by the theory that chess derived from India and does not have a connection to the Chinese xiangqi.
The stirrup? As Wiki notes, the first dependable representation of a saddle with *paired* stirrups is from China, yes. But single stirrups are documented elsewhere in the world 800 years earlier. My guess is that the paired stirrups were invented by Central Asian Huns, Turks or Mongols, the horsemen par excellance of the steppes a millennium before Temujin.
The crossbow was likely invented by the same people, not the Chinese, though it appears to have spread there before going westward. And, in the west, though technically not a crossbow, the ballista was invented around the same time.
The flamethrower? The Byzantines were launching Greek fire out of ship-based flamethrowers more than two centuries before Needham said the Song dynasty saw the invention of the flamethrower.
And, the list of "firsts" in the appendix seems a bit tendentious. For example, what's so special about a "Chinese-type" still, since Egyptians invented a still 700 years earlier?
Or "soil science"? What exactly did the Chinese discover "first"?
At other times, it just seems not true. I've never before seen the claim that the Chinese, not Croesus, invented metal coinage.
Beyond that, the book is a bit thin on other things.
Was it more love of a woman, or love of Marxism, that led Needham to be so enamored with not just ancient China, but post-1949 China?
Why did Needham go beyond legitimately selling Chinese discoveries to overselling them?
Why didn't the Chinese invent "modern science"? Winchester never really addresses whether Needham answered this rhetorical question he set himself or not.
And, if this book didn't have so many uncritical five-star reviews, I might four-star it myself, but even that is doubtful. In fact, Winchester's appendix is off-putting enough, I'd almost 2-star this book.
In short, it's not entirely unfair to accuse Winchester of hagiography. Whether that hero-worship is more of Needham or more of China, I'm not sure.
 The Man Who Revealed China To The World June 8, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Simon Winchester can always be counted on for an extraordinary reading treat. In The Man Who Loved China we have his best work since The Professor and the Madman.
Joseph Needham was a brilliant scientist and a remarkable eccentric. He could be affable one moment and withdrawn the next, he practiced nudism and had a very "modern" interpretation of his marriage vows, an interpretation his wife shared and which led to a menage a trois which lasted for decades. Most of all, Needham was a lover of China and of China's scientific gifts to the world. During World War II he was sent to China at the behest of the British and American Armed Forces to re-connect with the professors and other staff members of Chinese universities which had been evacuated during the war with Japan. During his adventures, which Winchester provides a marvelous description of, Needham became convinced that China was the originator of much of what has become modern science. He spent the last fifty years or so of his very long life writing an extraordinary multi-volume work, which is still in the process of publication, on science in Chinese civilization.
As always, Winchester has a keen eye for a good anecdote and a clear and witty writing style. He does an excellent job depicting Needham's extraordinary life, both his heights of achievement and his lows, such as the time his naivete about politics led to his being conned by Soviet propaganda and then black-listed for years by the US government, so that he was unable to visit the many American universities which wished to honor him. Winchester also reveals the many interconnections and odd conjunctions with which Needham's life was filled, for example his connection with the creation of the term "gung-ho" and the unwitting (and innocent) assistance he gave the Unabomber.
I teach AP World History, which of necessity spends much time on China. I am grateful to Joseph Needham for doing so much to reveal that land's multitudinous gifts to the world and to Simon Winchester for writing so engaging a biography of this complex, fascinating man.
Decoding the Man Behind a Masterpiece of China Scholarship May 27, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Joseph Needham was a brilliant scholar who seemed to care about, and revel in, everything. A leading biochemist at Cambridge University, a flamboyant leftist, an accomplished linguist, Needham (1900-1995) had an intellectual range at age 25 that impressed colleagues so much that he was said to be on his way to becoming the Erasmus of the 20th century.
One summer day in 1937, a knock came on his wooden door at Cambridge from the hand of a comely graduate student from China named Lu Gwei-djen. Needham was married, but it did not prevent his magnetic interest in Lu. Meeting her changed the trajectory of his life, and of Western scholarship about China.
As the two lay naked in bed sharing a smoke one evening, Needham asked Lu to show him how to write "cigarette" in Chinese. He was immediately captivated by the timeworn beauty of the ancient characters, and declared his ambition to learn the entire language. He did so swiftly, and it only fed his curiosity and spurred his determination to understand the origins and achievements of China's illustrious culture, one of the most complex in human history.
That project consumed the rest of his life. Volume by volume, Needham created "Science and Civilisation in China," a breathtakingly panoramic study of topics including astronomy, politics and zoology, and the interconnectedness of all. Wonderfully written, it became a 24-volume foundation for, and an inspiration to, generations of China scholars, journalists and writers drawn to the country's colorful enigma. One such writer was Simon Winchester, the skilled storyteller and author of the lively "The Professor and the Madman" on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Like many avid readers of books about China, Winchester repeatedly went back to "Science and Civilisation." Unlike others, Winchester decided to decode the man behind it.
What a story it turns out to be. "The Man Who Loved China" is a charming literary and cultural adventure that captures the unadorned brilliance and infectious enthusiasm of this remarkable man, with his outsized intellectual ambition and his endearing zest for life. Needham won an assignment to China as a British diplomat during World War II. Landing in Chungking, he had a local tailor make him a floor-length Chinese scholar's robe of blue silk, which he wore every day. He traveled extensively and at considerable risk, navigating the desert to see the Buddhist cave art at Dunhuang, skirting Japanese enemy lines along China's southern coast and collecting cartloads of artwork and books and cultural treasures. (The British diplomatic service paid for unlimited shipments home.)Needham's eye roved constantly, resting on attractive women here and there. But it landed more often on the marvels of Chinese civilization -- the abacus, the chopstick, the invention of movable type. Needham gradually learned of China's great discoveries -- paper, gunpowder and tea are among the most famous -- but the list grew so long and varied that it belied the common assumption in the West at the time that China was an exotic but essentially crude culture. Needham's study demonstrated otherwise. His easy ability to make friends helped his research by winning the confidence of Chinese scientists and scholars who assisted his investigations. In one instance, a meteorologist who was president of the prestigious Zhejiang University was so impressed with Needham and so concerned with World War II's destruction of scholarly material in China that he unexpectedly sent Needham an extensive trove of rare books, critical to later research.
After four years in China, Needham returned to Cambridge. For the rest of their lives Lu remained his companion, confidante and consigliere. Needham's wife Dorothy apparently accepted the arrangement. Joseph and Dorothy Needham remained married until her death in 1987. Two years later, Needham married Lu. When Needham conceived his masterwork, he envisioned seven volumes. He was only off by 17. It took the rest of his life, and then some, to complete the study. The first volume was published by Cambridge in 1954, to universal acclaim. Each successive volume brought more praise. When Needham died in 1995, having reluctantly agreed to let coauthors help him finish, a few uncompleted volumes remained. The final one came out in 2004.
Winchester is an engaging writer and brisk storyteller. His one failing in this book is to skate too quickly over what came to be known as the "Needham question": Why did China, so technologically advanced in antiquity, essentially get stuck after AD 500? In the following centuries, as modern science thrived in the West, why was China left behind? It is an enduring mystery of Chinese history, and it captivated Needham for all the years he worked on his masterpiece. In Winchester's view, Needham "never fully worked out the answers." After tossing out a few conventional theories -- China became too bureaucratic, it never developed a mercantile class -- Winchester blithely suggests that such a quest is ultimately "quite fruitless." To the contrary, it is a mystery that merits delving into, particularly when China is emerging as a candidate for superpower of the coming century. If China's complex cultural burdens stifled innovation in the past, will they prevent it from rising again? Will China surge briefly, only to sputter into a second-rate power? Or will it buck history and surpass the U.S.? Questions worth dwelling on.
 Not so good June 30, 2008
6 out of 19 found this review helpful
Okay, I've read two books by this guy and frankly, he's a hack. He has this obvious device of constantly creating false tension and the payoff is almost always disappointing. There is no real story here; nothing that could not be told in 1/3 the number of pages, quite possibly less, and even then, probably not worth the read.
Right Up Winchester's Alley July 2, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
If you look back at the titles of some of Mr. Winchester's older books, it's clear that Joseph Needham, the subject of this book, isn't the only man who loves China. Clearly, Winchester himself has a fascination for Asia and China. Admittedly, I have not read these earlier titles, having come to Mr. Winchester--like many I suspect--through the pages of The Professor and the Madman. However, I have kept up with his work since then and it's nice to see him able to bring his passion for China to the fore again.
Today, Joseph Needham is most remembered for the decades he spent putting together Science and Civilization in China, a series of books documenting the many advances made in China that pre-date the better known inventions/inventors in the West. What this ultimately means, as it was the West that took widest advantage of scientific and technical successes, is open to debate; however, it is fascinating to think about how far ahead the Chinese must have been at various points in their history, even into antiquity. A less inward-looking culture might have changed the entire face of world history.
Mr. Winchester gives us tidbits of these scientific facts to contemplate, but this book is really about Needham himself: a Cambridge scholar who was undoubtedly brilliant but in many ways controversial. He was very sexually liberated for his time, being married to a devoted woman who tolerated his many affairs, including a long-term affair with a Chinese woman, Lu Gwei-djen, who was likely the inspiration for much of his passion about China. He was sympathetic to communism and maintained a connection to communist China even when such a relationship was frowned upon. He dabbled in realpolitik which often caused him grief. But in the end, it is his work that is best remembered.
He started his career as a very successful scientist who parlayed his success and love of China into a diplomatic assignment to the country at the height of World War II. In the midst of his diplomatic duties--being a materials conduit for Chinese scientists--he made a number of trips across China, collecting information and artifacts which he periodically shipped home. When he returned, instead of resuming his scientific work, he devoted the rest of his life to history, assessing the materials he'd brought back and writing his magnum opus.
Mr. Winchester has an amazing facility for telling the stories of eccentrics and science. Here, he shows his skills yet again. This is a wonderfully readable book about a comparatively unknown scholar who deserves better. Mr. Winchester has done Needham--and the reading public--a real service.
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