Bomb, Book and Compass - Softcover

Winchester, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0670913790 ISBN 13: 9780670913794

Publisher: Viking, 2008

Synopsis

Before fate intervened, Joseph Needham was a distinguished biochemist at Cambridge University, married to a fellow scientist. In 1937 he was asked to supervise a young Chinese student named Lu Gwei-Djen, and from that moment sprang the two greatest love affairs of his life – with Miss Lu, and with China.

Miss Lu inspired Needham to travel to China where he initially spent three dangerous years as a wartime diplomat. He established himself as the pre-eminent China scholar of the time, firm in his belief that China would one day achieve world prominence. By the end of his life, Needham had become a truly global figure, travelling endlessly and honoured by all – though banned from America because of his politics. And in 1989, after a fifty-two year affair, he finally married the woman who had first inspired his passion.

Bomb, Book and Compass is Simon Winchester at his best – at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.

About this title

Review:

'An astonishing story' Sunday Times 'A fascinating, revealing story, told with Winchester's customary brio and wit' Telegraph 'One man's graceful, diverting account of another man's passion' The Times 'Succinct, enjoyable, engaging' Financial Times

From the Back Cover:

'A fascinating, revealing story, told with Winchester's customary brio and wit'Telegraph

The seventeenth-century philosopher-statesman Francis Bacon famously declared that nothing had changed the world more profoundly than three great inventions: gunpowder, printing and the compass. What he didn't know was that the Chinese had been successfully using all three, long before the west ever 'invented' them. And yet it was another 300 years before a remarkable man called Joseph Needham embarked on his epic, lifetime's work which would finally set the record straight. Inspired by a wartime mission to occupied China, he started writing what would become a twenty-four-volume masterpiece, chronicling the nation's astonishing history of invention and technology over five thousand years. It was, and remains, the greatest work on China ever created in the Western world.

In Bomb, Book and Compass, Simon Winchester tells the story of Joseph Needham, his magnificent book, the passion that inspired it, and the remarkable rise of the Chinese nation that continues to this day.

'One man's graceful, diverting account of another man's passion'The Times

'Succinct, enjoyable, engaging'Financial Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0670913790
• ISBN 13: 9780670913794
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 316