Tempest in a Teacup

Simon Winchester, the author of Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded August 27, 1883 and The Professor and the Madman : A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, is out with a new book, The Man Who Loved China. In it he tells the story of "an avid nudist, a wild Morris dancer, an accordion player, and a chain-smoking churchgoer and a supporter of gay rights" who also happened to be one of the twentieth century's premier Western scholars studying China. Like Winchester's earlier profiles about eccentric it's a great read; salon.com calls it, "an enjoyable, breezy read, well suited for reading on the chaise longue, gin-and-tonic in hand."

To bring the historical material up to date, you can also read Winchester's op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he examines China's puzzling technological retreat in the last centuries. Why, he asks, have "China’s innovative energies inexplicably withered away, and modern science became the virtual monopoly of the West[?]"

And finally, on the Britannica Encyclopaedia's blog, Matthew Battles takes Winchester to task for his idea: "Moral superiority mingles with sentiment and paranoia to produce a thick haze of incense-tinged nonsense." Buy the book and decide for yourself.--David E