Mauve

1856. Eighteen-year-old chemistry student William Perkin's experiment has gone horribly wrong. But the deep brown sludge his botched project has produced has an unexpected power: the power to dye everything it touches a brilliant purple. Perkin has discovered mauve, the world's first synthetic dye, bridging a gap between pure chemistry and industry which will change the world forever. From the fetching ribbons soon tying back the hair on every fashionable head in London, to the laboratories in which scientists first scrutinized the human chromosome under the microscope, leading all the way to the development of modern vaccines against cancer and malaria, Simon Garfield's landmark work swirls together science and social history to tell the story of how one colour became a sensation.

Fifteen-year-old Mélanie drives across the Arizona desert in a white Meteor, chasing fear and desire and the mysterious Angela Parkins, and breaking free from her mother and her mother's lover in their roadside Mauve Motel. And then we are with Maude Laures as she reads Mauve Desert, this story of Melanie, and becomes obsessed with it. She embarks on an extraordinary quest for its mysterious author, characters and meaning, which leads us into the third part, Mauve, the Horizon, Laures's eventual translation of Mauve Desert.

His new life in a small town promises much the same for Quentin as his old—isolation, medication, music—until he finds a mysterious quilt in the attic.

"Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world's greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors' favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichaes? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?"--Amazon.com.

The Busker Just another wandering minstrel? Locomotive Breath Not only a great song by Jethro Tull but also a frantic day-in-the-life story when it all just seems to go wrong. Dark Gallery We all have regrets, don’t we? What happens to all those bad memories when we keep them suppressed? Seeds of Dissent The function of government is to facilitate the democratic view of what an ideal society ought to be, but how do our younger citizens feel about the decisions being made? After all, today’s decisions do become their inheritance. Bastards Honesty and integrity—still admirable traits in modern society, or has it become acceptable to trade them off in the pursuit of wealth, success, and self-gratification? The Gravity of Elm’s Situation For every life a separate reality. Nineteen thought-provoking stories on almost as many subjects!

"When are the 1970s going to begin?" ran the joke during the Presidential campaign of 1976. With his own patented combination of serious journalism and dazzling comedy, Tom Wolfe met the question head-on in these rollicking essays in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine -- and even provided the 1970s with its name: "The Me Decade."