The Man Who Made Lists
In a review of The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus, we learn that one of the best known reference works in the English language, was fueled by a psychological urge to outrun madness and tragedy:
The Man Who Made Lists” outlines the “chronic mental instability” of Roget’s maternal grandmother; the “psychotic trance” in which his mother spent her last days after a life of neurotic “neediness”; the breakdowns undergone by Roget’s sister and daughter (he married late and was widowed early); and the grief-driven, throat-slashing suicide of his uncle, the great British civil libertarian Samuel Romilly, who expired in Roget’s blood-soaked arms.
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