There are some truly unbelievable stories in human history that somehow get buried over time – never making it into the things we’re taught in school. One of those strange and fascinating stories is that of Dr. William Minor, the real-life figure at the center of Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman.

In the 1870s in England, the Oxford English Dictionary was in the process of being compiled – an enormous and unprecedented task to catalog the entire English language. To accomplish this, ordinary people from across the English-speaking world volunteered their time, submitting words, definitions, and quotations to help build what would become one of the most important reference works ever created.

Among these contributors was an unlikely and deeply troubled man – one who would go on to provide thousands of entries from within the walls of an asylum.

Dr. William Minor was an American surgeon and Civil War veteran living in England when he committed the random murder of a local man during a severe episode of mental illness. Despite being declared not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to an asylum for life, he became one of the dictionary’s most prolific and valuable contributors, submitting thousands of detailed entries with remarkable precision.

This book covers some obviously very heavy topics, from mental illness to self-harm to murder, so it definitely isn’t for the faint of heart. That being said, it’s an important read. This is one of those stories that deserves to be told. It also served as the source material for the 2019 film The Professor and the Madman, starring Sean Penn as Dr. Minor in an incredibly believable performance.

Another detail I loved was how every chapter begins with a real entry from the Oxford English Dictionary. It made me wonder which entries Minor may have worked on himself.

This was the first book I read as part of a book club I recently joined at the house of one of my mom’s friends, and I probably never would have picked it up otherwise. If you can handle a fascinating yet tragic true story, this is a great choice. However, if darker themes tend to weigh on you, it might be better to learn about it in a lighter way, like on Google.

Either way, it feels like a privilege to know the story of this man’s life – the good, the bad, and the ugly.