Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China: Amazon.co.uk: Simon Winchester: Books

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Publication Date: 25 Sep 2008

Before fate intervened, Joseph Needham was a distinguished biochemist at Cambridge University, married to a fellow scientist. In 1937 he was asked to supervise a young Chinese student named Lu Gwei-Djen, and in that moment began the two greatest love affairs of his life – Miss Lu, and China.

Miss Lu inspired Needham to travel to China where he initially spent three dangerous years as a wartime diplomat. By the end of his life, Needham had become the pre-eminent China scholar of all time, a truly global figure, travelling endlessly and honoured by all. And in 1989, after a fifty-two year affair, he finally married the woman who had first inspired his passion.

Bomb, Book and Compass is Simon Winchester at his best – at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.

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Bomb, Book and Compass is Simon Winchester at his best – at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.

Product details

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Viking (25 Sep 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670913782
ISBN-13: 978-0670913787
Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.2 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 350,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

'A charming literary adventure ... Winchester is an engaging writer and a brisk storyteller' -- Los Angeles Times

'Beguiling. Winchester's latest journey into the past provides an impressive picture of China's technological history' -- Houston Chronicle

'Captivating. Makes the most obscure topic seem as if it should be on the front of that day's newspaper' -- Wall Street Journal

'Needham's story is phenomenal. This is the rare book where you wish the author had included more detail, not less' -- USA Today

'Reads like a thriller' -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

'Succinct and enjoyable. A salutary reminder of the singular achievements of the Chinese - as well as the perils of Eurocentrism' -- Financial Times

An atonishing story ... Very exciting ... Winchester's biography supplies the human side of the genius in generous detail -- Sunday Times

[Written] with great verve and style by Winchester in this absorbing biography
-- Observer

About the Author

A bestselling author in both Britain and America, Simon Winchester was born and educated in England and now lives in Massachusetts. Having reported from almost everywhere during more than thirty years as a foreign correspondent, including mainland China and Hong Kong, he now contributes to a variety of magazines and newspapers.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A bit disappointing 1 Feb 2009

By D. Livesley

Format:Hardcover

Joseph Needham was obviously a brilliant and fascinating man. However this book left me with the impression that perhaps he did not leave enough personal (as opposed to academic) material to make a really satisfactory biography. While much of the material in the book is interesting, I was not left with much sense of what 'made him tick'. The account is also very patchy - a lot of detail about a few relatively short episodes in his life, with long gaps between them - and in places spends several pages talking about someone else who is relatively peripheral to the story. I'd recommend it to people with an interest in Needham's work, but not as a great piece of biography.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great tale 18 Aug 2009

By C. Crispin

Format:Hardcover

I found this to be a great and gripping story about the creation of a masterpiece of academic work. I did not read this as a biography rather how an academic stumbled into a new life in and around China and wrote up the fascinating science and civilisation that he found there. Rather like the book about the creation of the Shorter English Dictionary - probably more interesting than the work it is introducing. A good read.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Feeble & propagandist book which doesn't do justice to Needham or China 8 Jan 2012

By Rerevisionist

Format:Kindle Edition

Joseph Needham was born in 1900 and lived into old age; the Second World War conveniently bisected his life, and his post-war life was spent absorbed in his series of volumes on China. His earlier life established him as a biologist and embryologist, though he's also described as a biochemist. He was fortunate, or skilled, in obtaining the Cambridge version of tenure in his 20s, and never experienced financial hardship. He fell in love, first, with the Chinese language (and one of its people); and, second, with the country itself, and in particular its scientific history; or rather its techniques and observations. Although he seems to be not very well-known now, he unquestionably led people in the 'west' to become better informed on China.

'Science and Civilisation in China', his magnum opus, which was continued after his death, tries to list and date Chinese achievements, and answer the question: Why did China fall behind in (or not develop) modern science?

I'm afraid Winchester's book is not very good, and is laden with Cold War and other propagandist material. The central core of the book, after his upbringing and early life, deals with Needham's visit to China as part of an official British group in the second half of the Second World War. Winchester presents this as a terrific adventure, in the parts of China not occupied by the Japanese. This is about as realistic a view as TV adventure programmes, where the camera crews, sound people, backup food supplies, spare parts, medical arrangements, security, communications etc are left out. For one thing, the Japanese codes had (I think) been cracked. The actual reasons for Needham's visit seem not to be known; probably something to do with global power struggles, perhaps related to Mao.... Needham was certainly an odd one out, and the Chinese could see this, and he made many firm friends, while making his detailed diary notes on techniques, landscapes and people in immaculate handwriting. Unfortunately Winchester has no interest in, or understanding of, science; he doesn't even describe Needham's early volumes for which he was made an FRS, the pinnacle of scientific establishment respectability. (Or his wife's volume). So Winchester's accounts of Needham's journeys are sketchy, and describe travel problems rather than purposes. A rather bitter communication quoted in the book - an expedition by lorries [trucks] costing �3,000 which could have been done by air.. accompanied by his Chinese mistress .. dog Chinese writing - seems likely to be more accurate.

It's unclear why Needham was sent; many career diplomats must have been fluent in Chinese. There's a passage in the book where Needham's diaries, usually overflowing, were silent - when in the company of Murray MacLehose, an ex-Hong Kong governor supposedly training Chinese guerillas against the Japanese. Some of Needham's papers remain closed, apparently at the whim of a librarian, until 2045, though these may be to do with subjects such as nudism, which Needham liked - though my guess is this may be more to do with the discomforts of swimming clothing at that time than any desire for exposure.

Anyway it seems Needham proposed his book in 1948 and funding was granted by CUP; he wasn't even required to do his normal work. He had accumulated a lot of material, all shipped back to Britain at public expense - the 'nearly limitless allowance then offered to repatriated diplomats' gets a mention. His collection was supplemented by a gift from a Chinese friend of the 'Imperial Chinese encyclopedia', a collection of 'all the important' Chinese writings, commissioned in 1700; and by a British Museum collection, something like the Chinese equivalent of the Elgin marbles, found in an extremely dry cave and spirited away in 1907 as twenty-four wagonloads.

During the Korean War Needham was involved in a controversy over biological warfare by the Americans - Winchester has a chapter on this, and notes a typical 'Cold War' 'think tank' - the 'hitherto unknown .. Intelligence Research Department of the British Foreign Office'. Poor Needham was somewhat 'ostracized' - not really the right word - including being refused visas to the USA - but this faded away as his volumes were published, and his reputation increased.

Let's consider the science first. Needham's biological knowledge was of course helpful in assessing human biology - medicine, births/ marriages/ deaths, health, and nutrition; vitamins, and even proteins, were fairly recent discoveries. Not just human biology: Winchester writes of Needham's first experience on China, watching a gardener grafting, entranced by the different techniques the man was using. Needham of course was familiar with microscopic life. Needham's chemistry enabled him to interpret rocks, mineral extraction, hydrocarbons. Needham had some interest in motor cars - the times were ideal for amateur enthusiasts - which must have helped with technology. All of this however gave him a rather condescending overview of Chinese accomplishments. His accounts of Chinese geography use western geological expressions, for example. The labs he saw seemed mostly to be duplicating work long ago carried out in the west - microscopical observations of Chinese flora and fauna, for instance. The question is therefore whether Needham overstated his case; maybe the discoveries and inventions he found had amounted to little, or been tucked away in some remote part of China, or just been an outcome of observation? It's significant that Needham wrote a great deal on Chinese 'alchemy' (he used the Arabic term), which is pre-scientific and empirical - as in fact it would have to have been. Needham reads somewhat like these highly unconvincing BBC programmes, claiming that Muslims achieved tremendous feats. Suggesting part of the motive for funding Needham might have been to flatter China.

Needham is not very good on maths - I know this from reading his volumes. There's not much on Newton, who invented the algebra of varying quantities in a fairly restricted range of situations. He also doesn't say much of broad hypotheses such as Darwin/ Wallace. Winchester doesn't make much attempt to deal with subtle differences in perception of the world, for instance whether 'induction' would have made sense to the Chinese.

So much for Winchester on the 'science' part of 'Science and Civilisation'. As to civilisation, Needham was very impressed by the Chinese not believing in God, something he'd been taught was universal. However, Winchester doesn't mention this. Needham was always left-wing in the genuine, not Jewish/'red', sense. However, he was something of a naive Marxist, although Winchester isn't very good on this aspect of Needham's character. Needham's books are sweeping on such things as 'the feudal system'. Winchester doesn't mention Bertrand Russell, whose book on China was published when Needham was in his early 20s, and whose attitude to China was pretty much identical to Needham's. Russell's book isn't even in the bibliography. It was probably suppressed almost as a reflex by Winchester, as Russell's Autobiography mentions Needham specifically in relation to chemical and biological warfare in Vietnam, and the refusal to allow a 'Viet Cong' (Winchester's word) to London to give evidence about it. Russell was apologetic in retrospect to Needham, for disbelieving him.

As to global power struggles, it seems unlikely that Needham had a clue about Jews in Russia - many others of course were like that, including Winchester. All the secret backroom stuff - who founded the UN, who controlled the 'World Bank', the truth about who McCarthy was hunting, the fakes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for that matter the probable fake of Nanking - is omitted or not known by Winchester. It seems *possible* that China was viewed as Russia was; the success of Jews in making money from it, while crushing the population, must have suggested the same thing in China: maybe the Korean war, and the ignoring of 'communist China' through the 1950s and 1960s, was juggling to get control of China? It's impossible to be sure, of course.

Winchester's book has plenty of nice touches - amusing stuff on Cambridge being entirely out of touch, Needham's liking for female company, which he extended into theory - he imagined Chinese mandarins conversing with erudite wives and concubines - and practice. When he was left alone in old age, he proposed to three women, who all turned him down. There's some touching detail of land in Cambridge donated to his nascent Institute. On the other hand, Winchester doesn't have doubts about Marco Polo, has no idea about atrocities in Korea and Vietnam, doesn't understand 'communism', dismisses rather abruptly Needham's facty poems on Cambridge life. Winchester generally has little feel for the control of information; he thinks newspapers reflect public opinions, for example; he gives a rather absurd list of reviewers of Needham's first volume on China. And he has no idea about science, giving an account of Jiuquan, a space centre - of course Winchester doesn't understand science fraud - and describes the vast new city of Chongqing in a superficial way. Winchester thinks China's racial attitude of superiority is a 'case-hardened sense of inner certitude that this vast array of invention has given to it'. Clearly nonsense, since westerners had to discover or invent the tradition. Read more ›

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2.0 out of 5 stars bombed out 25 May 2012

By Dr. P. R. Lewis

Format:Hardcover

Needham's legacy is indeed a great one, but I don't think this biography does him justice. You will not read a great deal about his magnum opus, Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1, Introductory Orientations: Introductory Orientations Vol 1 in this book, which is a great shame. The work by Needham extends to many volumes, each dealing with a different aspect of science and technology, an effort he pioneered with the help of many other scholars. The work was a revelation when the volumes were slowly published and were a great inspiration to other in the history of science. While focusing on Chinese technology and engineering, the books also compared the state of western technology at the same time. In this area, however, Needham was out of his depth and made many mistakes. For example, he suggests that the water mill was essentially a Chinese innovation (repeating many of the canards of western historians). It was known at the time that in fact the water mill was a Greek invention of ca 250 BC, and was developed and widely exploited in the Roman era. The still standing ruins of the 16 mills at Barbegal in Provence, France are testimony to their exploitation of the overshot mill. It is far more likely that the water mill diffused east to China. Winchester's book misses the target, and he should have devoted much more to this pioneering work by Needham, for which he will be long remembered. We await a definitive biography of this great scientist.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful account... 17 April 2012

By C. D. Nash

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

.. of an amazing man. This book describes the fascinating life of Joseph Needham and encouraged me to read more on the amazing achievements throughout 3,000 years of Chinese history.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and at the end felt that I had discovered a whole new subject area for future study. As is his trademark: a beautifully written and crafted account by Simon Winchester.

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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I am very pissed off with Amazon 4 Jan 2011

By jonco

Format:Hardcover

Book is great, but I am highly pissed off with Amazon for cutting Wikileaks off its servers. I am consequently reducing my use of Amazon as far as I can. DISGRACEFUL - you should not be a political organization, and note that 90% of Australians support what Wikileaks is doing. Please pass this to Mr Bezos.

Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China [Hardcover]

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