A lively account of our age-old quest for brighter colors, which changed the way we see the world, from the best-selling author of Proof: The Science of Booze 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

'Extraordinary. An intellectual feast as well as a visual one' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour, drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings, James Fox reveals how, through colour, we can better understand their cultures, as well as our own. Each colour offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch, and together they form a vivid, exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes, anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years,' Fox writes. 'The history of colour, therefore, is also a history of humanity.'

Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury explores color filmmaking in a variety of countries and regions including India, China, Japan, and Russia, and across Europe and Africa. Most previous accounts of color film have concentrated on early 20th century color processes and Technicolor. Far less is known about the introduction and application of color technologies in the period from the mid-1940s to the 1980s, when photochemical, “monopack” color stocks came to dominate global film markets. As Eastmancolor, Agfacolor, Fujicolor and other film stocks became broadly available and affordable, national film industries increasingly converted to color, transforming the look and feel of global cinema. Covering a broad range of perspectives, the chapters explore themes such as transnational flows, knowledge exchange and transfer, the cyclical and asymmetrical circulation of technology in a global context, as well as the accompanying transformation of color film aesthetics in the postwar decades.

“Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates “A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family.” —The Atlantic “Extraordinary...Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that’s often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create wealth in America.” —Ezra Klein When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than 1 percent of the total wealth in America. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money seeks to explain the stubborn persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. With the civil rights movement in full swing, President Nixon promoted “black capitalism,” a plan to support black banks and minority-owned businesses. But the catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. In this timely and eye-opening account, Baradaran challenges the long-standing belief that black communities could ever really hope to accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. “Black capitalism has not improved the economic lives of black people, and Baradaran deftly explains the reasons why.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A must read for anyone interested in closing America’s racial wealth gap.” —Black Perspectives

This origin story of history’s most vivid color pigments is perfect for artists, history buffs, science lovers, and design fanatics. Did you know that the Egyptians created the first synthetic color and used it to create the famous blue crown of Queen Nefertiti? Or that the noblest purple comes from a predatory sea snail? In the Roman Empire, hundreds of thousands of snails had to be sacrificed to produce a single ounce of dye. Throughout history, pigments have been made from deadly metals, poisonous minerals, urine, cow dung, and even crushed insects. From grinding down beetles and burning animal bones to alchemy and pure luck, Chromatopia reveals the origin stories behind over fifty of history’s most vivid color pigments. Featuring informative and detailed color histories, a section on working with monochromatic color, and “recipes” for paint-making, Chromatopia provides color enthusiasts with an eclectic story of how synthetic colors came to be. Red lead, for example, was invented by the ancient Greeks by roasting white lead, and it became the dominant red in medieval painting. Spanning from the ancient world to modern leaps in technology, and vibrantly illustrated throughout, this book will add a little chroma to anyone’s understanding of the history of colors.

Featuring hundreds of carefully hand-crafted illustrations as well as significant tuition on how to best compose and use images to create the most powerful frames, this book is potentially Hans P. Bacher's life's work encapsulated in one volume. Here, the internationally renowned production designer shares his expertise in an easy-to-follow and imaginative way – giving tips, exercises, and a depth of knowledge garnered from a lifetime in the industry. Bacher's production designs have established the look of many seminal animated films such as The Lion King, Balto, Mulan and Beauty and the Beast, so fans of his work will be delighted. While keeping the focus on storytelling, Bacher instructs readers in the art of animated cinematography with the ever-present aim of soliciting an emotional response from the audience. Vision: Color and Composition for Film represents an amazing depth of experience — and is visually arresting to boot.

The history of film students from the Global South who studied in Poland during the Cold War. As Poland’s second-largest city, Łódź was a hub for international students who studied in Poland from the mid-1960s to 1989. The Łódź Film School, a member of CILECT since 1955, was a favored destination, with students from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East accounting for one-third of its international student body. Despite the school’s international reputation, the experience of its filmmakers from the Global South is little known beyond Poland. Hope Is of a Different Color addresses the history of student exchanges between the Global South and the Polish People’s Republic during the Cold War. It sheds light on the experiences and careers of a generation of young filmmakers at Łódź, many of whom went on to achieve success as artists in their home countries, and provides insight into emerging areas of research and race relations in Central and Eastern Europe. The essays reflect on these issues from multiple perspectives, considering sociology, political science, art, and film history. The book also features previously unpublished photographs and film stills from private archives along with visual and written material collected at the Łódź Film School.