The Man Who Loved China

Tuesday, while Jean Feraca is out, "west for a romp in the California wine country..." Veronica Rueckert presented another great Here On Earth broadcast featuring Simon Winchester, author of "The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom."

Click to listen to the show.

Many of Winchester's previous titles have been New York Times bestsellers, including:

• The Professor and the Madman,
• The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology,
• Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded August 27, 1883, and
  
• A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906.

His latest work brings to life the extraordinary tale of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, its long and astonishing history of invention and technology. Amazon provides the following details:

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.

The Needham Research Institute remains the home of the Science and Civilisation in China Project, and houses the East Asian History of Science Library. As a recognized global center of study, the NRI offers a unique collection of books and other published materials on the history of science, technology and medicine in East Asia, and welcomes scholars from all over the world.

Check out Jean Fereca's blog to see what else is on her agenda.