The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman, magnificently researched and persuasively composed, is an uncommon story of madness, virtuoso, and the extraordinary obsessions of two exceptional men that driven to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, started in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever embraced. As definitions were collected, the managing committee, driven by Teacher James Murray, found that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee demanded on honoring him, a stunning truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Gracious War ingenious, was moreover an prisoner at an refuge for the criminally insane.