Reddit reviews Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
We found 9 Reddit comments about Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
There's a book about that if you're interested, it's s good read
Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
by Simon Garfield
Link: http://amzn.com/0393323137
I read a fair amount of pop history, and there's lots of good pop history! The "good stuff" tends to be quieter and not published by Certain Big Names and will cover more niche topics, or just generally make more modest arguments. I review pop history regularly on Saturday Sources. Honestly I tend to be harder on the academic history. Some recentish pop history I've liked (loosely defined as "costs less than $30")
> fragrances evolve, and stronger elements fade and subtle undertones come to the forefront.
Indeed. I discovered about 20 years ago that every guy who splashes on some Polo smells like blueberry muffin mix after 30 minutes to 4 hours. That's the long-lasting undertone of Polo.
Truth: Food flavorings are perfumes for canned/packaged foods. They're not added for your taste buds, but for your sense of smell. And they are designed and blended by the same chemists and perfumers who also do perfume for the human body. IIRC, I learned this from a chapter in a book called Mauve, although that book is primarily about fabric dyes.
I read a book a while ago about this: Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World. Quite interesting. They got all sorts of cool stuff out of coal tar. Synthetic aspirin is another example as well.
After I read those two, I was looking for more oddly-specific nonfiction books and came across Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World, check it out.
Mauve is a decent book, it involves Chemistry and I think it's kind of inspirational.
That being said, it's nowhere near the level of the books you've cited.
Mauve was the first synthetic dye, created in the 1850's. It was totally by accident, the inventor was trying to create a cure for malaria, I think. But the color became a instant fashion craze, and everyone had to have it. It set off a real race among the chemical companies to create new colors and dyes. There's a book about it and the chemistry revolution it started off: Mauve
Neil Armstrong tripping on the moon (I'm aware moonboots aren't laced)
> One small step for [a] man... ohsi...
Lee Harvey Oswald tripping in the depository and JFK inciting Russia into a nuclear war resulting in a fallout-style wasteland...
William Perkin failing to create the color Mauve and the ramifications of that decision...
Think of the famous scene in Norma Rae when the textile worker, played by Sally Field, shuts down her machine and, standing up on it, trips and fails to convince all her fellow workers to strike because she lost her credibility.
Trotsky: "If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution." Lenin trips on shoelace, breaks a leg, misses Petersburg trip, rendering Oswald's shoelace redundant.
Google "One man changes the course of history" and then replace the last part of the sentence with "but trips and doesn't" then extrapolate the consequences.
Perkins' discovery of Mauve and the beginnings of synthetic organic industrial chemistry is also a good read.
Also might check out the Chemical Heritage foundation. They may be able to help you.