Through meticulous research and authoritative writing, Fox helps us to see the world around us in a different light.
The colors that surround us are so ubiquitous that we often fail to see them. But opening our eyes can give us new insights and a different sense of ourselves.
In his first book for a trade audience, academic Fox casts a wide net, aiming to tell the story of humanity through the symbolism of seven colors: black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple, and green. He introduces the subject with chapters on how colors work at a scientific level, examining how the spectrum was slowly defined and understood. This is interesting stuff, but Fox’s real interest is social construction. Much of the meaning of black, associated with evil, stems from biblical references. Red often means blood and violence as well as sexual attractiveness, although the Chinese tie it to prestige and wealth. Yellow is often associated with the sun but also has links to villainy: Think of the yellow cloak of Judas in the famous Giotto fresco. For ages, blue, as an artistic color, was derived from somewhat tame vegetable dyes, but the discovery of Prussian blue, the first synthetic pigment, changed art styles ranging from the impressionists to Japanese woodcuts. White has often meant purity in everything from faith to soap. Purple, long associated with royalty—due to its incredible cost, before synthetic versions—really only came into its own when painters like Monet used it to add depth and texture to landscapes. Green has historically been tied to fertile gardens, which has evolved to its current connection with environment-based political parties and issues. Interestingly, the Quran describes green as the color of paradise. Diving deep into the background, Fox illustrates his points with a wide range of visuals, from the chemical structure of dyes to the pristine-white marble sculptures of Michelangelo. The color story, he notes, shows no sign of ending—as it should be.
Through meticulous research and authoritative writing, Fox helps us to see the world around us in a different light.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27852-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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