Looks at the making of the Oxford English dictionary

Product Description: There is no more beautiful or alluring coast in the world than the West Coast of North America: a 5,000-mile-long region that extends from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to Canada's British Columbia, south to Washington, Oregon, and California, and then to Baja California in Mexico...read more

Product Description: The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project: a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books...read more

The author of The Professor and the Madman recounts his experiences traveling to Diego Garcia, Tristan, Gibraltar, Ascension Island, St. Helena, Hong Kong, Bermuda, the British West Indies, the Falklands, and Pitcairn Island, all remnants of the vast British Empire. Book available.

From the author of the bestselling The Professor and the Madman comes the fascinating story of the father of modern geologyIn 1793, William Smith, the orphan son of a village blacksmith, made a startling discovery that was to turn the science of geology on its head. While surveying the route for a canal near Bath, he noticed that the fossils found in one layer of the rocks he was excavating were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany: that by following these fossils one could trace layers of rocks as they dipped, rose and fell -- clear across England and clear across the world.Obsessed with creating a map that would showcase his discovery, Smith spent the next twenty years traveling England alone, studying rock outcroppings and gathering information. In 1815 he published a hand-painted map more than eight feet tall and six feet wide. But four years later, swindled out of his profits, Smith ended up in debtors' prison. His wife went mad. He lived as a homeless man for ten long years.Eventually a kindly aristocrat discovered him; Smith, the quiet genius and 'father of geology' was brought back to London and showered with the honors that he rightly deserved. Here now is his astounding story.

Describes how more than ten thousand definitions were submitted for the first Oxford English Dictionary from Dr. W.C. Minor, an American Civil War criminal who was considered both a genius and a lunatic.

Product Description: Rising from the mountains of the Tibetan border, the river that is the symbolic heart of China courses through 3,900 miles of rugged country before emerging into the oily swells of the East China Sea. Connecting China’s heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, the Yangtze has throughout history also linked China to the outside world through its nearly 1,000 miles of navigable waters...read more