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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
Buy New: $14.76
You Save: $13.19 (47%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $13.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  (47 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3092
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
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
Release Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 Biography of a flawed intellectual, with little about China October 31, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought this book hoping to find out something about China, especially Chinese history. But the book contained very little about China; instead, I found the biography of an egomaniac whose scholarly work belies his inability to have any common sense in his daily life.
We hear of his journeys through China to seek for their historical knowledge, but we never see China itself.
We are told of all the times his car broke down, but except for Needham's annoyance, we don't learn anything else. (Was the terrain flat? Hilly? did it rain? Did they use sleeping bags or cots? Stay with foreigners or local hotels? How do car parts get transported into western China?)
He might as well have been traveling in Timbuktu for all the information about China in this part of the narrative. We never get the feeling of the people he meets,their families, or what they think, except of course for foreigners. Even when discussing his Chinese mistress, we learn more about Needham's ways of seduction than her family or background.
Then we have more unanswered questions on how he gathered his information.
For example, at one point, while stranded, he "interviews" a blacksmith and finds out a lot of information; yet we are not told any of this information on what the blacksmith is making, or how the blacksmith lives, nor of how his job fits into the culture, or even how they communicated (was the blacksmith of Western China fluent in Mandarin, or did he belong to the 50% of Chinese who speak dialects?)
The missing link in the story, as told by this author, is China herself.
We are expected to believe that Needham alone did all the works on his huge studies of China. We are supposed to believe this despite the various Chinese calliography styles over the last 3000 years, and despite his lack of knowledge of basic engineering or technology.
How much of his much acclaimed work was done by his Chinese mistress, or others, without attribution?
Finally, for a man who is praised for his intellectual curiosity, one is amazed that he didn't seem to notice the millions killed or jailed by the purge of intellectuals in the "thousand flower" time, the massacres of the "landlords", and the mass starvation of the great leap forward.
[...]
Which brings us to the "Needham question": Why did a China that had so many techological and scientific breakthroughs fail to follow them up to make them used by their society, and thereby fall behind the West?
Maybe because, like Needham and his snobbish university collegues, they were too busy being "philosopher kings" and superior to ordinary folks that they didn't think applying ideas to lower the burden of their inferiors.
So if you want to read a story of how a brilliant sociopath can be successful in the UK University system, read this book.
IF you want to read about China, wait for the Chinese to tell their own story.
 A colorful life October 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book is quite thorough in going through the highlights of Needham's interesting career and personality. There is too much attention paid to his randiness and not enough to his process of editing the vast amount of material he collected. I doubt he will be remembered for how many women he slept with.
We are told that he assembled a vast library of unique and obscure sources that laid out the scope of early Chinese technology and innovation. How he waded through it seems to be either unimportant or unknown to the author. Even one specific and detailed example would have made the book much better.
Fortunately there is a large bibliography.
a formula book October 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The problem with this book is that Simon Winchester is grinding them out of the "mill" now. When an author produces books beyond a certain rate, they tend to become formulaic and by-the-numbers. Everything that was fresh in "the professor and the madman" has become a stale formula in this book. Its all assembly-line craft and no passion.
If you have never read one of his books, I would recommend it. Its not his best, but its respectable. But otherwise.....We don't need any more formula books about european eccentrics who made some great contribution that nobody has ever heard of.
 Excellent Story September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A fantastic story about a man and his passion for life and work and about a country so far ahead yet so far behind. I am no historical buff but this (audio) book made me keep wanting to get into my car so that I could hear more. The storyteller is good to listen to and the images are real.
Superbly rearched and written tribute to a great man September 25, 2008
I read this book cover to cover in one sitting on a long flight to China. The book is well researched, superbly written, and all together a loving tribute to Joseph Needham, who came alive between the covers. Highly recommended to anyone.
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