“Madness did not just run in [Roget’s] family; it galloped, sped, sprinted, dashed and made haste. If the title of Joshua Kendall’s fine new biography of Roget has a clinical Oliver Sacks feel, the material pretty much justifies it. [Kendall] convinces a reader of the psychological roots and therapeutic success of the Thesaurus. ” — New York Time Book Review “ The Man Who Made Lists is brisk and vivid, with Kendall coloring between the lines left by history. Word geeks may find something to get their temperatures up.” — Los Angeles Times “A readable and informative, if not masterful treatment of a worthy and fascinating subject.” — Seattle Times “Who knew that the man behind the thesaurus also invented the slide rule, volunteered to test laughing gas, and barely avoided jail in revolutionary France?” — Library Journal “Josh Kendall’s biography trace[es] an intricate career and vividly depict[s] the early development of this extraordinary, quirky mind . Roget’s achievement was certainly unique, and now the story of this troubled life and how he overcame his demons comes as pure revelation.

” — California Literary Review “Joshua Kendall has written a fascinating account of Roget’s life. The book is dense with details and cleverly organized .” — New Haven Register “In The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus , U.S. journalist and word-lover Joshua Kendall tells the life of Peter Mark Roget, thesaurus-maker to the world, and tells it very well indeed. There are enough sidelines and footnote-candidates (Roget tested laughing gas on himself, noticed the visual persistence-of-memory phenomenon that eventually allowed the cinema projector to be made, and participated in the making of the slide rule), and Kendall is a good enough storyteller to keep the pages turning.” —Simon Winchester, The Globe and Mail.