About the Author

Simon Winchester grew up beside the Atlantic in South West England and studied geology at Oxford. He is the bestselling author of The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, Krakatoa, The Map That Changed the World, The Surgeon of Crowthorne (The Professor and the Madman), The Fracture Zone, Outposts and Korea, among many other titles. In 2006 he was awarded the OBE. He lives in western Massachusetts and New York City.

Reviews

`Winchester's latest is a rollicking work of pop science that entertains and informs' Publishers Weekly (starred review)

`Winchester makes a convincing case ... `Exactly' succeeds resoundingly in making us think more deeply about the everyday objects we take for granted. It challenges us to reflect on our progress as humans and what has made it possible. It is interesting, informative, exciting and emotional, and for anyone with even some curiosity about what makes the machines of our world work as well as they do, it's a real treat' New York Times

`Simon Winchester's new book is a tale of many triumphs ... His delight in words cannot be bridled, so that even "Exactly," which is, after all, a nonfiction treatment of technology, brims with amusing and rare nouns such as bagatelle, bijoux, cynosure, seraglio and susurrus. These whir smoothly alongside the argot of the machine shop ... Mr. Winchester covers more than 200 years of fine-tuning in this work, and corrals a large cast of eccentric individuals' Wall Street Journal

`An ingenious argument that the dazzling advances that produced the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the revolutions that followed owe their success to a single engineering element: precision ... An enthusiastic popular-science tour of technological marvels ... readers will love the ride' Kirkus

`Another gem from one of the world's justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people' Booklist (starred review)