The Story Of Colour: A Voyage Through The Hidden Messages Of The Spectrum

Description

Why is green the colour of envy? Why is black `evil'? Why is white pure? Why do we `feel blue' or `see red'? Why do colours have different meanings for different cultures? This book offers a lively, anecdotal treatment of the cultural mysteries of colour, and focuses on the way we respond to colours, the significance we give them - and how these things change over time and from place to place. It tells the story of how we have come to view the world through lenses passed down to us by art, science, politics, fashion, sport and, not least, prejudice.

Promotion info

The Story of Colour explores the cultural mysteries of colour and the reasons colours have come to take on very particular meanings - meanings that vary over time and in different areas of the world. It tells the story of how we have come to view the world through lenses passed down to us by art, science, politics, fashion and sport, and, not least, prejudice.

Author description

Gavin Evans lectures in Cultural and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, London and is a senior lecturer at the London School of Journalism. He has worked as a journalist for 32 years (writing for The New York Times,The Guardian, The Telegraph, Esquire, Men's Health, The New Statesman, The Times, The Independent, The Financial Times, The Daily Mail and The New Internationalist, among many others). He is the author of five books, including the memoirDancing Shoes is Dead, short-listed for the Alan Paton non-fiction prize, and Black Brain, White Brain: Is Intelligence Skin-Deep, which focuses on the revival of scientific racism.