True Color
The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--from Azure to Zinc Pink
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True Color
Narrated by:
Kory Stamper
Pre-order Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Kory Stamper
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By:
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Kory Stamper
About this listen
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.
*Includes a downloadable PDF of images from the book
Critic reviews
"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 depicts the esoteric editorial wrangling and nitpicking with verve, bringing a self-serious, cloistered world to vivid life. She also poignantly profiles the devoted relationship between Godlove and his equally brilliant wife Margaret, who finished his work after his death... 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
"In a narrative voice I can best describe as simultaneously cozy, chatty, raucous, and intensely authoritative, the great Kory Stamper guides us through a modern history of the tortuous attempts, as they played out at the Merriam-Webster dictionary company, to quantify and define, in words, something that seems to resist both quantification and definition (in words): color. And it's an enthralling journey, including, amid a prickly dramatis personae, its centerpiece portrait of Isaac Hahn Godlove, a brilliant scientist drafted into the lexicography business, one of the most fascinating people you've surely never heard of before. True Color is wildly entertaining and bountifully informative; I couldn't have enjoyed myself more."
—Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English
“Color is a secret, maddening, and hilarious language, and Kory Stamper defines it brilliantly.”
—Simon Garfield, author of Mauve
"An interesting and witty book about how black-and-white dictionaries cope with the complexity of color, True Color shows that the history of the visual spectrum is inextricable from the history of lexicography.”
—Adam Aleksic, New York Times bestselling author of Algospeak
“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
“Lively… Filled with opinionated, insistent, stubborn characters who devoted their lives to accuracy… A fresh, irreverent history of words.”
—Kirkus
—Publishers Weekly, starred
"In a narrative voice I can best describe as simultaneously cozy, chatty, raucous, and intensely authoritative, the great Kory Stamper guides us through a modern history of the tortuous attempts, as they played out at the Merriam-Webster dictionary company, to quantify and define, in words, something that seems to resist both quantification and definition (in words): color. And it's an enthralling journey, including, amid a prickly dramatis personae, its centerpiece portrait of Isaac Hahn Godlove, a brilliant scientist drafted into the lexicography business, one of the most fascinating people you've surely never heard of before. True Color is wildly entertaining and bountifully informative; I couldn't have enjoyed myself more."
—Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English
“Color is a secret, maddening, and hilarious language, and Kory Stamper defines it brilliantly.”
—Simon Garfield, author of Mauve
"An interesting and witty book about how black-and-white dictionaries cope with the complexity of color, True Color shows that the history of the visual spectrum is inextricable from the history of lexicography.”
—Adam Aleksic, New York Times bestselling author of Algospeak
“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
“Lively… Filled with opinionated, insistent, stubborn characters who devoted their lives to accuracy… A fresh, irreverent history of words.”
—Kirkus
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