New Title Announced
LAND: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

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My new book, describing in detail the rich and complex history of humankind's relationship with our planet's 37 billion acres of habitable land, appeared in hardcover in the US on January 19th and in the UK two days later. Already it has garnered a handful of stellar reviews, including lengthy notices in the New Yorker, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, among other publications. I am currently on a book tour—flying from city to city and country to country while remaining steadfastly at home in Massachusetts, marooned like all authors by the pandemic. The tour's final stops will be in late February in Sydney and early March in Auckland—cities where, since it is their austral summer, I would dearly love to be. No matter: the book is doing very well, and I hope that if you see it (or hear it: I narrate the audio version), you will enjoy what I have to say. It was certainly the greatest fun to write!


The End of The River

 
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Published in digital and audio formats by Scribd Original, April 2020


The Man with the Electrified Brain

 
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Published in digital and audio formats by Scribd, June 2020, formerly published in 2015


Mississippi River: Headwaters and Heartland to Delta and Gulf

by David Freese—I wrote the essay

 
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To be published in hardcover by GFT Press, September 2020


Winner of 2019 Audie Award for Nonfiction

Click here for UK and Commonwealth jacket and title...

Click here for reviews...

Delighted that under its UK title, Exactly, and in the US, The Perfectionists, it has been short-listed for the Royal Society Science Book Prize (the most prestigious prize in the field). It is one of six. 



When the Sky Breaks
Junior Library Guild Selection!


Paperback of Pacific
New York Times Bestseller!

SIMON WINCHESTER is the New York Times best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman. His recent titles include Atlantic and The Men Who United the States. Winchester was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to journalism and literature. He lives in Massachusetts and New York City.


Word of the Week

Arcanum. By chance my ceramicist-wife put a hand-thrown porcelain lampshade into our kiln today, reminding me of this classic book of ten years ago, The Arcanum, in which Janet Gleeson recounted  the obsessive European quest to copy the marvels of Chinese craftsmanship. She chose the title from the Latin for a hidden thing, a mystery, one of the most sought-after secrets of the alchemists. The Chinese arcanum was all bound up in the proportions, widely known now, and which I trust Mrs. W. got right in her pure white lampshade, cooking away steadily today..

Archived Words of the Week...