1896年深秋，《牛津英语词典》的主编默里博士从牛津动身，去见一位叫迈纳的神秘人物。二十年来，此人工整而有条理的词条，给了他源源不断的勇气和希望，将他从纸与墨的暴风雨中拯救出来。他们书信不断，却始终无缘一见。
当默里博士满怀恭敬地到达目的地后，却大吃一惊：对词典贡献最大的志愿者，是个被关在疯人院里的杀人犯。
《牛津英语词典》成为了英语语言的至尊，迈纳和默里的故事却没有多少人真正了解，在历史的尘埃中，他们真实而隐形地活着。
本书曾横扫世界各大畅销书榜，一跃成为《纽约时报》《泰晤士报》排行榜双冠王。两个永不言弃的Loser，为世界确立了一种新秩序。我们的命运可以是这样，也可以是完全不同的结局。不管被安排了怎样的遭遇，你总还能做点什么。

In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life.A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems.Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think—based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols—laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate.There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.