Books like

Books like Color: A Natural History of the Palette

12 books with a reading profile close to Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay. Outward-looking and clear-cut; a moderate read.

  1. 1 Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

    Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

    by Nathaniel Philbrick

    Also outward-looking · history, narrative

    In this historical account, Nathaniel Philbrick examines the fifty-year period beginning with the 1620 arrival of the Pilgrims and culminating in the devastation of King Philip’s War.

  2. 2 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

    Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

    by Erik Larson

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    Erik Larson reconstructs the final 1915 voyage of the luxury ocean liner Lusitania, tracking its path from New York toward the Irish coast during the early stages of World War I.

  3. 3 How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

    How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

    by Thomas Cahill

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    Thomas Cahill argues that during the fifth century, as Germanic tribes dismantled the Roman Empire and burned its libraries, the classical tradition survived only on the remote island of Ireland.

  4. 4 A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

    A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

    by Timothy Egan

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan moved beyond the deep South to establish a stronghold in the American Midwest, specifically Indiana.

  5. 5 The Bookseller of Kabul

    The Bookseller of Kabul

    by Åsne Seierstad

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    Following the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad lived with the family of Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul who risked imprisonment to preserve Afghan literature.

  6. 6 The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

    The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

    by Daniel James Brown

    Also clear-cut · history, narrative

    Daniel James Brown reconstructs the 1846 Donner Party disaster through the specific experiences of Sarah Graves, a twenty-one-year-old newlywed traveling west from Illinois.

  7. 7 The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

    The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

    by David Grann

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    In 1925, British explorer Percy Fawcett entered the Amazon jungle to locate a hidden civilization he named "Z," believing it to be the birthplace of complex South American culture.

  8. 8 The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

    The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

    by Denise Kiernan

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    In the early 1940s, the United States government constructed Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a secret city carved out of rural farmland to house seventy thousand residents working on the Manhattan Project.

  9. 9 The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

    The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

    by Garrett M. Graff

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    Garrett M.

  10. 10 Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

    Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

    by Piers Paul Read

    Also clear-cut · history, narrative

    In October 1972, a Fairchild FH-227D carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed into the remote glaciers of the Andes Mountains.

  11. 11 The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

    The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

    by Erik Larson

    Also outward-looking and clear-cut · history, narrative

    Erik Larson chronicles the five months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the surrender of Fort Sumter.

  12. 12 Germany

    Germany

    by Neil MacGregor

    Also outward-looking · history, narrative

    Neil MacGregor examines five centuries of German history through the lens of thirty specific objects and monuments.

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