Another Great Simon Winchester Book

The Man Who Loved China - Simon Winchester
Originally published in hardcover in 2008 - Harper

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Winchester again takes a long-forgotten tidbit of trivia (Joseph Needham) and creates  quite a story around this man's intriguing life and the rediscovery of China.


I purposefully read this one also during the Olympics - and because of that am still profoundly impressed with the Chinese empire. I could not help but think while watching the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, when the fireworks create the impression of giant footprints, that we are in fact witnessing the awakening of a sleeping giant.



Amazon 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.