In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the
bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman
("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and
Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life
the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant
Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held
secrets of China, long the world's most technologically
advanced country.
No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a
freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was
devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while
working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he
instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student,
with whom he began a lifelong affair.
He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress
swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel
to her home country, where he embarked on a series of
extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this
ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to
bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible
for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations—
including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension
bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before the rest
of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly
recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to
far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for
the Chinese people.
After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world
what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic
Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's
long and astonishing history of invention and technology.
By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-
handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the
greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.
Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the
sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life.
Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations,
and, indeed, mankind itself great—related by one of the
world's inimitable storytellers.
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