Book Review-The Man Who Made Lists

Last week I picked up The Man Who Made Lists, by Joshua Kendall. This is a book about Peter Roget who is best known for his thesaurus. I read a book by Kendall a couple of years ago about one of the main contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary. I found that book quite interesting and looked forward to this new book. Roget was born in the late 18th century and lived until 1862. This was the height of the English Enlightenment. There were many middle class Englishmen who had the leisure to study and experiment with ideas and science. Roget was trained as physician but wasn't social enough to have a successful medical practice. He was obsessed with lists from his youth. He took refuge in lists of words. There were other accomplishments throughout his life like the development of the slide rule and his Bridgewater Treatise contribution which was a mammoth series of books detailing how the Bible was scientifically possible. Roget is known for his thesaurus though. Unfortunately, the book doesn't have much suspense. It is very dry. Just describing what happened day to day in his life was pretty boring. Roget might be of interest. This book didn't bring that out.

Enjoy!