Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern

Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern

by Adam Rogers
Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern

Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern

by Adam Rogers

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Overview

"Informative and entertaining...Rogers is a seasoned raconteur, unreeling an eons-spanning tale with skill." —Wall Street Journal


A lively account of our age-old quest for brighter colors, which changed the way we see the world, with a new afterword by the author


From kelly green to millennial pink, our world is graced with a richness of colors. But our human-made colors haven’t always matched nature’s kaleidoscopic array. To reach those brightest heights required millennia of remarkable innovation and a fascinating exchange of ideas between science and craft that’s allowed for the most luminous manifestations of our built and adorned world.


In Full Spectrum, Rogers takes us on that globe-trotting journey, tracing an arc from the earliest humans to our digitized, synthesized present and future. We meet our ancestors mashing charcoal in caves, Silk Road merchants competing for the best ceramics, and textile artists cracking the centuries-old mystery of how colors mix, before shooting to the modern era for high-stakes corporate espionage and the digital revolution that’s rewriting the rules of color forever. 


In prose as vibrant as its subject, Rogers opens the door to Oz, sharing the liveliest events of an expansive human quest—to make a brighter, more beautiful world—and along the way, proving why he’s “one of the best science writers around.”*

*National Geographic


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780358695240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 07/12/2022
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 655,227
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

ADAM ROGERS is the New York Times best-selling author of Proof: The Science of Booze, a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and winner of the IACP Award for Best Wine, Beer, or Spirits Book and the Gourmand Award for Best Spirits Book in the United States. He is a deputy editor at Wired, where his feature story “The Angels’ Share” won the 2011 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award. Before coming to Wired, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a writer covering science and technology for Newsweek. He lives in Oakland, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Chapter 1 Earth Tones 1

Chapter 2 Ceramics 18

Chapter 3 Rainbows 37

Chapter 4 The Lead White Of Commerce 59

Chapter 5 World's Fair 83

Chapter 6 Titanium White 106

Chapter 7 Color Words 138

Chapter 8 The Dress 160

Chapter 9 Fake Colors And Color Fakes 175

Chapter 10 Screens 189

Conclusion 213

Afterword: Starlight 225

Acknowledgments 235

Notes 239

Bibliography 273

Index 309

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