. Probably an interesting story, told in a weird way. There are many popular history books out there where you can tell by reading them what references the author used to assemble their narrative. Long recitations of menu items is a tip-off. In this case there was a fancy well-documented 50th anniversary party feting the guy who created the color mauve. And I assume Garfield read that and did the rest of the digging himself. A lot of long quotes from letters. A somewhat dry story after the initial discovery. The book explains why it was a big deal but a lot of it is about the history of colors and dyes and him being forgotten by history