"Kendall asserts this less as an interpretation than as a given, but it is plausible. Roget was possessed by a 'lifelong desire to bring order to the world,' and 'classifying the world [became] an obsession that would preoccupy him for the rest of his life.' He had "an idiosyncratic definition of pleasure," which 'had little to do with enjoyment, but everything to do with the intellectual challenge of learning about order.' Early in his life it became obvious that he was brilliant, but it took him a long while to find a connection between his obsession with order and his need for a remunerative career."
Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post reviews Joshua Kendall's The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus.
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