Publisher's Weekly Review
London-based writer St. Clair delivers a mix of science, humor, and art history in this collection of bite-size essays on the cultural and social lore of colors based on her column in British Elle Decoration. The author arranges her color commentary in blocks: color entries start with white and end with black; in between, St. Clair tells the stories of colors unglamorous (umber) and obscure (gamboge) with those that kill (orpiment pigment is around 60% arsenic) or change (verdigris is the green patina that results when copper is exposed to air). She explores etymologies (buff from buffalo) and sprinkles wit (taupe, French for mole, is "browner than a mole had a right to be") throughout the collection. Her sentences guarantee sustained reading: "Balthasar Gérard was the Lee Harvey Oswald of his day"; the word heliotrope fills "the mouth like a rich, buttery sauce." St. Clair's rhetoric beautifies the form of the brief essay. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
London-based journalist St. Clair sports a fetishistic love of color more specifically, of the way color is described and translated across linguistic barriers. She first fell in lust while studying fashion and lifestyle trends of the eighteenth century. St. Clair found descriptions of color and hue downright titillating. In this digestible anthology of chromatic origin stories, readers have a chance to join in St. Clair's obsession. The collection of informative essays is organized by color family. For example, readers will learn about the vast differences between saffron, amber, and ginger in quick succession. Visual artists will relish the scientific exploration of pigments and stains, but every reader will enjoy the ample supply of answers to some of life's biggest questions, such as: Which orange came first, the color or the fruit? (The fruit.) Why do we call it pitch black? (Complete darkness tends to throw us off balance.) Including an index and suggested further reading, The Secret Lives of Color holds surprise and satisfaction at every striation of the rainbow.--Eathorne, Courtney Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE BIG BOOK OF ROGUES AND VILLAINS Edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime, $25.) Penzler takes what is arguably the best part of crime and mystery novels - the villains - and packs them into an encyclopedic anthology that manages to cover both Dracula and Dr. Fu Manchu. To be read through a monocle and with a sinister sneer. THE SECRET LIVES OF COLOR By Kassia St. Clair (Penguin, $20.) Chrome Yellow, Dragon's Blood and Pitch Black. These are just three of the 75 shades, dyes and hues St. Clair explores as she tells the backstory of the colors that make up our world. WHY WE DON'T SUCK By Dr. Denis Leary (Crown Archetype, $27.) Leary, the actor and co-creator of the FX series "Rescue Me" (and doctor by honorary degree), takes "equal opportunity aim" at the most partisan issues of our political moment with a mission to #MakeAmericaLaughAgain. PIE & WHISKEY (Sasquatch Books, $19.95.) This project began as a reading series organized by Lebo and Ligon, in which they sent 12 writers a pie and whiskey prompt to inspire new work. Six years later, they have created an anthology that's just as eclectic, drunk and delicious. THE UNQUOTABLE TRUMP By R. Sikoryak (Drawn and Quarterly, $19.95.) Sikoryak, an artist known for his arch comic adaptations of literary classics, casts President Trump, along with his outlandish claims and alternative facts, as some of the most notable villains in comic book history. Wonder Woman is now "Nasty Woman" and the Black Panther series is reimagined as "The Black Voter." Noteworthy Last summer, I happened to meet two authors whose books sent me into a World War II reading binge. Lynne Olson's "LAST HOPE ISLAND" chronicles the story of the Poles, French, Dutch and other Europeans who took refuge in Britain and fought to liberate their homelands from there. This was a discovery and led me to her previous books, including "CITIZENS OF LONDON" and "THE MURROW BOYS," the latter written with her husband, Stanley Cloud, and both remarkable accounts of Americans in the wartime British capital. I also loved "THE JERSEY BROTHERS," by Sally Mott Freeman, about three brothers in the Navy. The oldest was on the USS Enterprise carrier in the Pacific. The middle one, Freeman's father, set up Franklin D. Roosevelt's Map Room to track the war. The youngest was captured by the Japanese and the book is the story of the search for this brother, missing in action. So powerful, so richly researched. - PETER BAKER, CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, ON WHAT HE'S READING NOW.
