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The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--from Azure to Zinc Pink
by Kory Stamper
A kaleidoscopic journey through the secret history of hues—and the story of the obsessive genius behind the definitions of colors we use today, from the beloved author of Word by Word.
begonia (n.): 3 -s : a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see coral 3b), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william — called also gaiety
What could "bluer than fiesta" possibly mean? While editing dictionaries for Merriam-Webster, Kory Stamper found herself drawn again and again to the whimsical color definitions in Webster's Third New International Dictionary—especially when compared to the dry and impersonal entries that filled the rest of the volume. Stamper couldn't help but wonder: Who was the voice behind these peculiar definitions?
Meet I. H. Godlove, an erratic but brilliant up-and-coming scientist who was one of the experts Merriam-Webster hired in 1930 to help revise the dictionary to reflect a rapidly modernizing world. His fascinating life mirrors the wild and winding journey that color science, color psychology, and color production took through the twentieth century. Stamper tracks these industries as they move into the atomic age and intertwine in strange and surprising ways, spanning two world wars and involving chemical explosions, an unexpected suicide, dramatic office politics, and an extraordinary love story.
Filled with captivating facts about color words and colors themselves—did you know that the word "puke" used to refer to a fashionable shade of reddish-brown before it was associated with vomit?—and fueled by Stamper's inexhaustible curiosity, True Color will transform the way you see the world, from black-and-white to Technicolor.
"Stamper takes readers on an uproarious journey into Merriam-Webster's somber early-20th-century office and the decades-long, behind-the-scenes kerfuffle over the seemingly simple task of defining colors...Stamper writes with grace and a delightful sense of humor, particularly when making fun of her own camp...A scintillating journey into the prismatic heart of a subject that 'touch[es] everything.'" —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Lively… Filled with opinionated, insistent, stubborn characters who devoted their lives to accuracy… A fresh, irreverent history of words." —Kirkus Reviews
"A delightful romp through the irrepressible, slippery, and often confounding world of color and lexicography, supported by an appropriately colorful cast of characters." —Kassia St. Clair, author of The Secret Lives of Color
"Funny, illuminating, and meticulously researched. I've been waiting for this book for twelve years and I was still blown away by what's inside." —Gretchen McCulloch, New York Times bestselling author of Because Internet
This information about True Color was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kory Stamper is a lexicographer who has written dictionaries for nearly thirty years at Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries, and Dictionary.com. She is the author of Word by Word. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, New York magazine, and The Washington Post, and she blogs regularly on language and lexicography at www.korystamper.com.
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