Simon Winchester's 'The Professor and the Madman' unravels the astonishing true story behind the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. It delves into the unlikely collaboration between Professor James Murray, the dictionary's visionary editor, and Dr. W.C. Minor, a brilliant but criminally insane asylum inmate. Minor's meticulous work provided thousands of word definitions and citations, despite his confinement for murder. This gripping narrative explores themes of genius, madness, crime, and the monumental effort required to compile one of the world's most comprehensive language resources.