A book using colour as a way to access a range of other topics, without ever losing focus.

Some of the choices will probably be controversial, such as the emergence of “whiteness” as a racial classification, even though supported plentifully by evidence. There are plenty of other less challenging anecdotes, though. Why do we usually consider there that there are seven colours? – at least in part because of Newton’s religious and alchemical ideas that led him to want to tie colour to the notes on the musical scale

I most enjoyed the chapter on purple, mainly because it focused on the significant technological change that synthetic aniline dyes brought into culture, changing the relative abundances of various colours and changing the ways in which they were perceived as signifiers of wealth and status.

4/5. Finished Sunday 11 August, 2024.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)