Book Log 2010 #53: The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester

Moving ahead three centuries-plus we encounter another wandering intellectual in a foreign land. Joseph Needham was a career academic, establishing himself at Cambridge as a preeminent biochemist. In 1937 three Chinese scientists came to work with him, which led him to learn Chinese and develop a deep interest in Chinese science and the question of how China was overtaken by the West in science when China had developed an early lead. Needham would redirect his interest from biochemistry to this question, becoming a respected expert on China and the author of the multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China.

The real interest in Needham's story, though, comes from his trips to China (both as an academic and as a representative of the British government during World War II) and his unorthodox (for the time and place, certainly) personal life. Needham was a naturalist, a committed leftist and incorrigible womanizer (he would marry his longtime mistress, one of the Chinese scientists he met in 1937, after his wife of nearly 60 years died in 1987). Needham did have some trouble with his political views, but otherwise his interesting personal life did not seem to diminish from his professional accomplishments.

Winchester spent several years living in and writing about Asia, and that background helps him explain various details of Chinese history, language and culture in a way that someone less knowledgeable (like me) can understand. He also has developed a very approachable style for non-fiction, as seen in his fantastic earlier book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Professor and the Madman.

This isn't a book I would have normally picked up, but it was on the shelf of "good reads you might have missed" that our library offers, and I have to say it was rightly placed there.