The Man Who Made Lists [Hardcover]

Joshua Kendall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 2008

The extraordinary true story of Peter Mark Roget and his legendary Thesaurus.

Peter Mark Roget-polymath, eccentric, synonym aficionado-was a complicated man. He was an eminent scholar who absorbed himself in his work, yet he also possessed an allure that endeared him to his mentors and colleagues-not to mention a host of female admirers. But, most notably, Roget made lists.

From the age of eight, he kept these lists with the intention of ordering the chaotic world around him. After his father's death, his mother became, at once, overbearing and despondent. Soon, his sister would also descend into mental illness. Despite these tragedies, Roget lived a colorful life full of unexpected twists and discoveries-including narrowly avoiding jail in Napoleon's France, assisting famed physician Thomas Beddoes by personally testing the effects of laughing gas, and inventing the slide rule.

Evocative and entertaining, The Man Who Made Lists lets readers join Roget on his worldly adventures and emotional journeys. This rich narrative explores the power of words and the everlasting legacy of a rediscovered genius.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published in London in 1852, Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases became popular in America with the 1920s crosswords craze and has sold almost 40 million copies worldwide. According to freelancer Kendall in this Professor and the Madman wannabe, Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869) compiled the thesaurus as a means of staving off the madness that pervaded his family—the classification of words was a coping mechanism for his anxiety. Burdened by his father's early death and a mentally unstable mother and grandmother, young Roget was shy and melancholy. In the wake of the suicide of his uncle and surrogate father, Samuel Romilly, a distinguished MP, Roget's mother slid into paranoia, and a depressed Roget left a flourishing medical practice. But in his 40s, he found happiness: he married a wealthy, intellectually curious woman; developed a lively social circle; and became a first-rate scientist, lecturer and science writer for the masses. His thesaurus, which he tinkered with for nearly half a century, borrowed principles of classification from Roget's hero, the naturalist Carl Linnaeus. Although Roget is a tantalizing subject, Kendall never lights the necessary spark to make the legendary wordsmith come alive. B&w illus. (Mar. 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

The title tells all: rather than a discussion of etymology, The Man Who Made Lists examines Dr. Roget and his creation through a psychological lens. Critics couldn’t help but compare the effort to Simon Winchester’s acclaimed The Professor and the Madman (2001), about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Incidentally, in the Atlantic, Winchester criticized Roget’s Thesaurus for fostering “poor writing” in its indiscriminate cataloging. While even those reviewers who agreed with Winchester’s assessment acknowledged the value of Kendall’s subject matter, they diverged on its execution. A few thought the book well-written, a fine balance between historical research and novelistic flourishes. Others found forced dialogue and scenes, slack narrative, and factual errors. Still, The Man Who Made Lists is a fascinating look at a man, an era, and a now-iconic book.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1ST edition (March 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399154620
• ISBN-13: 978-0399154621
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,138,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Lexicography

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Revealing, but somewhat disappointing, April 1, 2008

By 

Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Man Who Made Lists (Hardcover)

It could be argued that a generation from now the man whose name is synonymous with synonyms might very well be forgotten, thanks to computer-based websites that offer up what Peter Roget first published in 1852. Joshua Kendall offers a glimpse of a man who was a medical doctor by profession but made his lasting name through his "avocation"... a word not known in Roget's day. It is revealing but incomplete.

Peter Mark Roget was descended from a lineage that seemed to produce more than its fair share of depressed family members. His mother never quite recovered from her husband's early death, his sister, jilted as a young love, suffered bouts of lifelong melancholy and his famous uncle, so set off by grief from his wife's death that he took his own, all contributed to Roget's own depression. Given the fact that Roget lived to be ninety is no small order, but "order" is the very word by which he lived. Shutting out the very emotions that might have given color to his life, Roget turned to listmaking. It is here we are forever grateful to him.

Kendall's biography is rather dry and often flat but he does introduce a humorous chapter (and a profoundly historical one given the Napoleonic times) whereby a young Roget is hired to take the two teenage sons of a wealthy Englishman to Europe for a year or more and give them an education through travel. That the highly unemotional and humorless Dr. Roget could help the boys absorb anything about Paris "through the senses" would have been suspect, and consequently, as the author points out, the sons wrote back to their parents regarding the numbers of statues and pictures that were contained in The Louvre and the number of tower steps and organ pipes at Notre Dame... hardly worth a trip to the City of Light.

What is missing in Kendall's book is any lengthy discourse as to how Roget finally put his thesaurus together, something so sorely lacking that it begs a question as to why it was not included. Everything seems to be in place as to why Roget wrote his thesaurus and had it published, but the process of compilation...that which might have made Roget spring to life... never appears. It's a serious enough omission not to recommend the book itself, but Kendall's look at the personal side of Peter Roget has just enough attraction to warrant a read. Given Roget's historical popularity and standing, I only wish there had been more.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Poorly Written, April 7, 2008

By 

Alvin Steingold (Columbia, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Man Who Made Lists (Hardcover)

Brevity is the soul of wit. The subject matter is incredibly interesting and the book is well researched. Unfortunately the book is poorly written, so much so that I am going to have to work rather hard to finish it.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, November 13, 2008

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Man Who Made Lists (Hardcover)

Entry Word:
disappoint
Function:
verb
Text: to fall short in satisfying the expectation or hope of<they were disappointed by the outcome of the big game
Synonyms: cheat, dissatisfy, fail, let down

I thought it best to use Roget's own words to express how I felt about this book. It's like a McBio. There is so much left out or unexplained and it isn't till you read the acknowledgments at the end of the book do you find out that the author didn't mean the book to be a scholarly work.
Well what did he mean? He also then admits that "where primary source material was lacking, I offer my best approximation of specific details".
In other words he made them up.

OK the biggest failing of the book is that it is non-sequential which I think is a poor tribute to a man who spent his life trying to bring order and classification to everything in life. Kendall has a habit of digressing to another period for two or three paragraphs and then going back to where he was; so that you go from the 1820s to the 1840s and back
again. Well he gave it a good try and I bet he really tried his best (well I can't prove it but that's the impression I get) but it wasn't good enough.

Zeb Kantrowitz