Subtitled "A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary," Winchester's book follows the story of two very different men, yet each with a passion for order and an obsessive love of words. Scotsman James Murray, a self-taught professor, was the OED's editor for more than forty years. W.C. Minor was an American Civil War veteran serving a life sentence for murder at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, as well as one of the OED's most brilliant off-site contributors. A fascinating read for one and all, even if you've never been part of a collaborative effort to catalog a vast, evolving web of knowledge.

Havi Hoffman