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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 Yorker staff 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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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