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.): 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 with the dry and impersonal entries that filled the rest of the dictionary. 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 them 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 20th 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 be a highly fashionable color before it was associated with vomit?-and fueled by Stamper's inexhaustible curiosity, A Trick of Light will transform the way you see the world, from black-and-white to technicolor. KORY STAMPER is a lexicographer who spent almost two decades writing dictionaries at Merriam-Webster. 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.
