A Perfect Red was written by Amy Butler Greenfield. It was about the role of red dye in the history of the world. It started by describing the symbolic meaning of the color red in many ancient cultures, and went on to explain how the rarity of good red dye led to many Renaissance elites using red dyed clothes a statement of wealth. When the Spanish conquistadors found cochineal (the brightest red dye anyone had ever seen) in the New World, Europe embraced it. For hundreds of years, cochineal was in high demand and low supply, Then finally other countries managed to smuggle it out of Spain and grow it for themselves, and the market collapsed.I thought that this book was boring. Some parts were interesting, such as the chapter on pirates, but there was too much detail on things that were not relevant to the plot. I admire the amount of research and time that Greenfield put into this, (the bibliography is 25 pages long) but I would not recommend this book to others.
~Mary Magdaline
It sounds like an interesting book, talking about how much a color dye can mean to certain people and cultures
ReplyDelete-Harriet Tubman
I find it fascinating that the author created a book that connected a single color to events in history.
ReplyDelete-John Wilkes Booth
Sounds like a good book, my book also dealt with something as small as red dye effecting the world
ReplyDeleteMissy Elliot
I found this work to be pretty interesting, but I think Amy Butler Greenfield will become a better writer as her career progresses. This was a really great topic, but the structure of the book didn't quite grab me, and I felt that her style was a little rough. I felt like she was a kid who had done a ton of research, and just churned through her notecards in order to fill the pages.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I was struck by how many words in our language come from textiles and cloth production. I never knew what "tenterhooks" meant. Now I do. But, I can't say the book held my attention very long.
Nice work!
Mrs. McCabe