HarryT -- you're quite right. I should have restricted my statement to that particular dictionary, not all dictionaries. As for pro vs. pre... That was a simple typo.

Xenophon

I enjoyed The Professor and the Madman, though I don't think it was Winchester's best work. I was fascinated at how long the OED project took (and, like a previous poster said, that it wasn't halted at some point along the way for any number of reasons.)

Many of Winchester's books have several story lines that intersect his main focus, and he spends quite a bit of time on each of them. Personally I like the way that type of non-fiction humanizes events and puts them into a broader perspective - era, consequences, etc. With Madman, I got the feeling it made what might have been an otherwise dry story more interesting. YMMV.

I thought both Krakatoa and Crack in the Edge of the World were fantastic.

Sorta offtopic, but maybe this will be of interest to some.
Tom Gally, a lexicographer and Japanese translator, has a semi-blog about translation and dictionaries (heavily Japanese oriented). Some of the more interesting entries:
Japanese dictionary "officially pirated" by U.S. in 1942
Typos in a book criticizing dictionary mistakes
Dictionary advertisements

Complete index