The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary put out a call during the late 19th century pleading for "men of letters" to provide help with their mammoth undertaking, hundreds of responses came forth. Some helpers, like Dr. W.C. Minor, provided literally thousands of entries to the editors. But Minor, an American expatriate in England and a Civil War veteran, was actually a certified lunatic who turned in his dictionary entries from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
This book and audio compact disc program instructs students of English as a second language in the elements of grammar, presenting a grammar review that emphasizes speech and correct pronunciation. The compact discs include spoken dictations for each of the book's ten chapters. Students start by writing out what they hear, and then comparing what they have written with the book's printed version. In the process, they begin learning the elements of grammar, staring with the simple present tense of the verb "to be" and progressing to all other tenses and parts of speech. Students gradually learn how to use English words and pronounce them properly in grammatically correct sentences.
