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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: 4219
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:
`The man departs - there remains his Shadow.' August 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book should be of interest to both those who are interested in remarkable individuals as well as those interested in the history of Chinese invention.
Joseph Needham (1900-1992), a biochemist with a bright future at Cambridge, became fascinated by Chinese language and history. The story of Joseph Needham, his determination and passion, his relationships, intelligence and eccentricity is interesting of itself. The fact that he turned his formidable investigative intelligence to uncovering China's history of invention has resulted in what is considered to be the greatest work on China so far written in the western world. However, this is still a work in progress and while its breadth is staggering its conclusions are not yet complete.
I am intrigued by Joseph Needham, but I am fascinated by his work in China. Fortunately, in this book, Simon Winchester provides a wealth of suggested reading as well as a list of Chinese inventions and dates they are first mentioned. The list includes: printed books ( 9th century AD); recognition of beriberi (1330 AD); magnetic needle compasses (1088 AD); explanation of camera obscura (1086 AD) and the accurate estimation of Pi (3rd century AD). In the interests of accuracy, some of the listed inventions (such as chess) are disputed.
I read most of Simon Winchester's books: I find his eclecticism energising. I would recommend this book to anyone who is seeking to know more about Joseph Needham and his thirst for knowledge of China. I would also recommend this book to anyone who is seeking more information about what was invented in China, and some understanding of the history and culture of this fascinating country. As to why China didn't make more progress earlier as a consequence of its amassed knowledge? That is an entirely different and even more challenging question.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
 Very fine history and a great read May 31, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Mr. Winchester's biography of Dr. Needham is fascinating. The book succeeds on many levels. Like other of Winchester's books, it documents the extraordinary accomplishments of a genuine eccentric, making it compelling just in narrative terms. In addition, it traces the work of (arguably) the greatest Sinologist that the world has known, east or west, whose mammoth undertaking over many volumes has demonstrated that China is responsible, directly or indirectly, for an extraordinary number of innovations which we take for granted (and for which we often misattribute credit).
I do think very highly of this book and have strongly recommended it. That said, it seems to me to have one shortcoming. On the one hand, the book is highly economical. Winchester paints a very clear picture of Needham, his spouse (or spouses, depending on how you count them), his remarkable accomplishments in biological sciences, and then the astonishing project by which he and his team documented what is, for all intents and purposes, the invention of science and technology over three millennia of Chinese thought. On the other hand, the book is highly economical--its strength is its weakness. Winchester weaves through the study two questions fundamental to thinking about China. The first (and he appears to have discovered manuscript information which documents the moment when it occurred to Needham) was the suspicion that China was indeed responsible for an awful lot more in engineering, science, commerce, medicine, agriculture, civil reform, military planning (etc., etc., etc.) than anyone had ever thought. The second, and one which begs many more questions, was perhaps on the fringe of Needham's own thinking (hard to tell) but very central to Winchester's, here and in other of his works: What the heck happened in the 16th century or so, which seems in some ways to have initiated a hiatus in China's development of leading innovation?
Here's where I'd love to hear more. Winchester suggests towards the end of the volume (and I take this from his earlier work too) that for some reason the culture in a sense gave up. He takes a further step in that reasoning. If I understand him correctly, he concludes that China took a break for a few centuries, pausing in a 3000+ year history of extraordinary technological innovation. Well, he suggests, maybe the break is over.
I know that this is an unfair point to make, and I offer it as a 'criticism' only with tongue in cheek. It amounts to saying that the book should have been three or four times longer and much more than a biography of Needham. As an historical biography and cultural study, it is very fine and a page-turner. I do hope that Mr. Winchester will continue this line of thinking, begun in earlier volumes and continued in the context of Needham's enormous contributions, and I look forward to further installments. I strongly recommend the book.
Seeing the Future through the Lenses of the Past June 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Winchester has, characteristically, written a superbly readable, inevitably simplified, and seriously informative book about both an extraordinary human life and a profoundly important human truth. Joseph Needham was an original - Teddy Roosevelt's physical courage, Charles Darwin's intellectual ambition, George Bernard Shaw's literacy and zest for life in all its dimensions. And he tackled with unbelievable efficacy the gulf between Western self-referential perception of history and the reality of Asia's, and most particularly China's (for in truth India's ancient contributions in mathematics are under explored by both Needham and Winchester), astonishing contributions to the world. This book is a brilliant primer as we enter the Asian Century - a wake up call to those of us who have come to believe that all innovation comes from the West, and will continue to do so. As Winchester, through Needham, demonstrates, neither of these beliefs are true - and the consequences in the near future will be immense.
Must read for all China enthusiasts! June 28, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a great book covering Joseph Needham, Ph.D. and his life work on 19 volumes of "Science and Civilization in China", Caius College, Cambridge University, UK.
His personal life is interesting. He has a wife who is into biochemical research, and has several paramours. The second marriage with Lu Gwei-djen was a great read. Lu waited for him, her whole life.
If China invented all of these scientific products, then what is the reason that China fell behind western countries in the last 50 years?
It is communism, that killed all the innovation. Cultural revolution and gang of four destroyed China's science and technology. Mao Zedong is the major problem for the lack of leadership.
History changes after Deng XiaoPing took charge. Deng was the major force for economic reform.
Unfortunately, Joseph Needham was either too old, or too much involved in the old China. He totally missed the new China development. He passed away in 1995, and that is when the new China started to take off.
 Winchester's book-length author's bio of Needham and his opus shortchange both August 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Biography of Joseph Needham reads something like an extended review of his epic opus "Science and Civilization in China" (24 volumes to date, starting in 1954, and still in progress). Everything in the biography points to this life work, but then at the point when a more extended description and review of this manifold work is in order, Winchester steams to his finish with a chapter describing a political pothole Needham created for himself in the deepest part of the coldest-War McCarthy era, and then a chapter about the end of his career and his final decline and death.
So while Needham's story is fascinating, I left it feeling shortchanged and wanting to know more about both Needham and his book. He was a lifelong small-"s" socialist and even small- "c" communist (and constant supporter of Mao and his Communist revolution), but never a Communist. Yet he appeared to be an unwitting dupe of an anti-American plot that subsequently unclassified Chinese, Korean, and Russian documents have revealed were pure Cold War propaganda set pieces. At least Winchester concludes Needham's unwitting dupehood (dupeness? dupicity?), but I was left wanting to know more about the incident from British archives or other sources (in Winchester's defense, he found during his research that American archives on the incident were still classified at the time of writing).
I would have also have liked to know more about the fact-gathering trips around China made by Needham during his first five-year sojourn there (for example, maps showing key cities and points of discovery on his various routes would be nice), and about subsequent trips made to China on similar fact-finding missions.
Finally, I was left wanting to know more about Science and Civilization itself. Winchester clearly states Needham's purpose in planning and writing of the book: first to document China's many historic firsts in discovery and invention to counteract Western intellectual laziness and presumptive (and spectacularly wrongheaded) NIH snobbishness, and second to answer the question of why, approximately 500 years ago) Chinese inventiveness ground to a halt.
But I want to know more about the product itself. For example, a family tree of the books' titles, volumes, and sub-volumes, and tables of contents would be interesting, and perhaps brief sketches of highlights of each volume. An appendix listing the titles, publication dates, authors and coauthors (nearing the end of his long working life, Needham realized he would be unable to complete the vast work he had envisioned, and subcontracted out writing of sections and entire volumes to other authors) would also be nice.
And finally, while the comparison to the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of National Biography is briefly mentioned, as all three are vast multi-volume encyclopedic works that grew out of one man's vision, it would be interesting to know more about these parallels. Particularly interesting, and curiously missing in light of Winchester's earlier bestseller The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary are more parallels to that great work. Surely, in researching and writing these two books Winchester found many more interesting parallels and ideas of concordance and apposition than the brief mention he gives here.
In short, while this was not a bad book, I was left a bit frustrated by these inadequacies, especially from such a well-read and criticly-acclaimed writer.
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