This is a book about the life of the man who wrote Roget's Thesaurus. True, not much about the thesaurus but more about the process of writing, thinking, obsessing and trying to stay sane. The thesaurus isn't as much an achivement as a manifestation of his life experiences. ( )

This is a biography of Peter Roget. It was... okay. The first part of the book, which went into great detail about his life, was kind of dull. And then the end was rushed -- "He wrote the Thesaurus and then he died." (Okay, not quite that rushed, but still.) It wasn't a bad book, but it could have been a much better one. ( )

Interesting psychological basis for the development of the thesaurus. But not enough about the lists themselves, in my opinion. ( )

The Man Who Made Lists
By Joshua Kendall.
. G. P. Putnam’s & Sons. (297 pps) 2008 $25.95
A Review by Colin J. Edwards
“Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.” AESCHYLUS. Prometheus Bound
Joshua Kendall’s ‘The Man Who Made Lists’ is a refreshing break from the plethora of spiteful political exposés that have demanded our attention this election year. With a tutored eye, he introduces the reader to the life and times of Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869), physician, theologian, lexicographer and compiler of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Born in London while England fought America at the front door, and Spain at the back, Roget started what was to be for him a sad and humorless life. Nevertheless, Kendall’s light touch sails us through this ocean of misery and madness in a way that might otherwise try the reader’s endurance.
Disturbed people surrounded young Peter; indeed, he exhibited obsessive- compulsive behavior himself long before such a condition was recognized. However, he handled it by exercising his fertile brain to the exclusion of normal life.
Long before his thesaurus was published, Roget …
• Qualified as a physician at Edinburgh University.
• Developed a new laboratory test for arsenic poisoning.
• Published a paper on the slide rule, inventing the log- log scale.
• Discovered that the retina typically sees a series of still images as a continuous picture, with subsequent implications for film making in the future.
• Achieved success as an academic physiologist.
• Published a 250,000-word treatise on animal and vegetable physiology to international acclaim.
His day job was as a dedicated physician at industrial Manchester where he endured great hardship while tending to the poor. Not too many doctors do that these days – not in SW Florida anyway.
He was also involved in what could have been a life threatening adventure. One of Roget’s many activities was to accompany a family of young children on a grand tour of Europe to give them what would have been an intensive education. When they were in Switzerland, Napoleon demanded the arrest of all adult Englishmen. Swift and persistent action on his part allowed him to return to England with his charges; safe and sound. There is even a suggestion that his escape plan was suspended long enough for Madam de Stael to seduce him.
Madam de Stael was not the only ‘name’ to punctuate his life. Roget was no stranger to Jeremy Bentham and Humphrey Davy. He had more than a nodding acquaintance with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Erasmus Darwin, (Charles’s grandfather), and Benjamin Franklin’s son William were notable conversationalists. He was involved in a book club that Isaac D’Israeli, (Benjamin Disraeli’s father), was invited to join.
It was towards the end of his life that the Thesaurus was published. It had 28 printings before he died, and continued by his family. Roget died while on holiday in West Malvern, Worcestershire aged 90, and lies in the cemetery of St James's Church. Maybe the steep hills there had something to do with it.
Roget’s life was filled with sadness, but Kendall avoids melancholy and moves the biography on at fiction speed. The result is a well-written biography of a very interesting intellectual who prospered despite adversity. A pleasure to read – more than once.
End

There are two things I hope to learn when reading a biography, first, I expect to find out about the life of the person who the book is about, and second, I hope to learn about the society in which the person is living (social morals, living conditions of the people, politics, etc.) The Man who Made Lists delivered very well on both of these points. The subject of this book, Peter Mark Roget, was very much shaped by not only his family dynamics, but also the social expectations of the time. And he believed in and followed these expectations to a "T". As such he was very much a stereotypical "stiff upper lip" 19th century English Gentleman. Roget is today a word synonymous with Thesaurus, he wrote the first one and it is the why and how which is so fascinating. Roget was a member of a lineage through which depression and obsessive/compulsive disorders moved through the generations. Those of his family who beat these mental problems, were workaholics. Roget discovered that making lists were his therapy. Beginning at the age of about seven, he began making lists of the natural world (plants and animals) as well as writing the same things in Latin. This developed ability allowed him to reach the top of his profession, medical research. His years of research, list making, and cataloging a variety of information were all part of the making of the Thesaurus. To be fair, he actually worked on the book throughout his life.
Although much of this book is very readable, there are slow sections in which the ins and outs of his academic life and associations are detailed. I very much enjoyed reading the descriptions of social life of this period in time, as well as some interesting things concerning the Wars between England and Napoleonic France. ( )