Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World Book

I am glad that Garfield wrote this book because I don't think I would otherwise have learned about the history and significance of synthetic dyes. However, this book seemed to be more a collection of facts than a narrative. I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that Mauve contains the author's notes, which he planned to flesh out to create a coherent story, but then he ran out of time. In many instances, I wasn't sure what to make of the facts presented.

Example One: Garfield says that Perkin married his first cousin. Period. Did that make him a weird guy, or was this the type of marriage the norm in nineteenth century England? I have no idea. I also don't know how the union came to be: Were the Perkins madly in love? Did their parents (and aunts and uncles) approve? etc.

Example Two: "In movies that word (mauve) has been used imaginatively. In Bruce Robinson's screenplay for Withnail and I, the lecherous Uncle Monty defines Withnail with the disparaging phrase, He's so mauve.'" Since I've never seen this movie, I have no idea what kind of character Withnail is, and therefore don't know what mauve is meant to convey about Withnail. Does it have anything to do with Uncle Monty's lechery? Since Garfield has given no sense of how the word was used in this film, I'm forced to simply accept that it was used "imaginatively." Also, I'm left to wonder whether this paragraph added meaning to the book.

The best part of this book was seeing so many unfamiliar, beautiful words that are the names of colors. Apparently there are 7,500 unique color names. I'm going to try to get a hold of the full list!