Well, that sucks. He's one of my favorite authors. I recommend the audiobooks which he reads himself.
I especially liked "The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" and "Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic".
I came to mention that book, known in the UK as "Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" (same book, different title). Very good book.
If you're interested in that subject (starts around 1750s with Wilkinson boring out a cannon, then goes to James Watt because he needs a steam engine for his foundry. He sees James is struggling with a good seal due to cylinder tolerances. He uses the boring technique on a blank casting and the first industrial steam engine is born).
If you find this interesting, I don't recommend keeping the book on your bedside table because you won't want to go to sleep!
I never read his work, and I've been looking through his wikipedia, but I noticed he did the same with other books, slightly or completely different titles, is this due to what he felt the audience in each region would be more receptive towards in terms of a title, or is there another reason?
This is done by publishers all the time, perhaps the most famous being Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the UK becoming the Sorcerer's Stone in the USA.
It's often done because of a perceived (or real) difference in phrasing that would go over differently on the other side of the pond.
He wrote a fantastic biography of Joseph Needham, a chemist at Cambridge who learned Chinese in his 30s and subsequently created an exhaustively thorough history of scientific discovery in ancient China that was published as a gigantic set of encyclopedias. The research into Needham's wartime travels in China (relying on university and Foreign Office archives) was top notch.
> Simon Winchester was born in London on Sept. 28, 1944. He was the only child of Bernard and Andrée Winchester (de Wael.) By some accounts, his father, a British soldier, was imprisoned in Nazi Germany at the time of his son’s birth. In interviews, Mr. Winchester has frequently suggested that, when he returned from captivity, his father was not enthusiastic about his young son and sent him to boarding school in England at around the age of 5.
If you enjoyed Stewart Brand's Maintenance you probably would also enjoy Winchester's The Perfectionists. Below is Brand on Winchester [0].
Winchester’s book really shows how precision helps to drive progress. For Watt, a tolerance of one-tenth of an inch made his steam engines efficient. In Ford’s day, engineers and manufacturers could be precise at the level of a millionth of an inch. Today, chip fabricators have gotten things down to five nanometres. And, as the saying goes, a nanometre is to a tennis ball as a tennis ball is to the whole earth.
Well, that sucks. He's one of my favorite authors. I recommend the audiobooks which he reads himself.
I especially liked "The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" and "Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic".
But all of his works are great.
All of his books are a fascinating read.
Apologies for the zero content comment, but damn it, was looking forward to what he would write next.
I came to mention that book, known in the UK as "Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" (same book, different title). Very good book.
If you're interested in that subject (starts around 1750s with Wilkinson boring out a cannon, then goes to James Watt because he needs a steam engine for his foundry. He sees James is struggling with a good seal due to cylinder tolerances. He uses the boring technique on a blank casting and the first industrial steam engine is born).
If you find this interesting, I don't recommend keeping the book on your bedside table because you won't want to go to sleep!
I never read his work, and I've been looking through his wikipedia, but I noticed he did the same with other books, slightly or completely different titles, is this due to what he felt the audience in each region would be more receptive towards in terms of a title, or is there another reason?
I suspect that the publisher may decide to vary the title for different markets. I have seen this with books by other authors.
PS: The dictionary book was great. All of those slips!
This is done by publishers all the time, perhaps the most famous being Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the UK becoming the Sorcerer's Stone in the USA.
It's often done because of a perceived (or real) difference in phrasing that would go over differently on the other side of the pond.
He wrote a fantastic biography of Joseph Needham, a chemist at Cambridge who learned Chinese in his 30s and subsequently created an exhaustively thorough history of scientific discovery in ancient China that was published as a gigantic set of encyclopedias. The research into Needham's wartime travels in China (relying on university and Foreign Office archives) was top notch.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/28/biography3
His book on small British holdings in the 90s, Outposts, was an amazing read. He was a gifted writer who could humanize without romantize.
My introduction to his work was Kraktoa: the Day the World Exploded. A fascinating read.
Well that sucks. "The Professor and the Madman" is one of my favorite books.
http://archive.today/bklxW
Pacific (given I’m in California and visit Asia often) has been one of my favorites.
Glad he was so prolific before passing away.
One of the best travel stories I’ve ever read was by Simon Winchester: The Most Perfect Hotel in the World
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50425351
The madman kicked ass. A broken person can do unbroken work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Winchester
I can also recommend the movie named after the American title of his Oxford English Dictionary book.
> Simon Winchester was born in London on Sept. 28, 1944. He was the only child of Bernard and Andrée Winchester (de Wael.) By some accounts, his father, a British soldier, was imprisoned in Nazi Germany at the time of his son’s birth. In interviews, Mr. Winchester has frequently suggested that, when he returned from captivity, his father was not enthusiastic about his young son and sent him to boarding school in England at around the age of 5.
If you enjoyed Stewart Brand's Maintenance you probably would also enjoy Winchester's The Perfectionists. Below is Brand on Winchester [0].
0. https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/stewart-brand-...
Or "The Surgeon of Crowthorne" if you don't want the dumbed-down-for-the-US-market title.
An important book; one of several that perhaps exists in part because of the room in the market that was carved out by Dava Sobel's Longitude.
Different marketing for different cultures/regions is not about “dumbing down”.
Maybe, maybe not, but this time was. (Not the only time either)