Blue Audiobook By Kai Kupferschmidt cover art

Blue

In Search of Nature's Rarest Color

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Blue

By: Kai Kupferschmidt
Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
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A globe-trotting quest to find blue in the natural world - and to understand our collective obsession with this bewitching color

Blue is a rare color - natural blue, that is. From morpho butterflies in the rain forest to the blue jay flitting past your window, vanishingly few living things are blue - and most that appear so are doing sleight of hand with physics or complex chemistry. Flowers modify the red pigment anthocyanin to achieve their blue hue. Even the blue sky above us is a trick of the light.

Yet this hard-to-spot accent color in our surroundings looms large in our affections. Science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt has been fascinated by blue since childhood. His quest to find and understand his favorite color and its hallowed place in our culture takes him to a gene-splicing laboratory in Japan, a volcanic lake in Oregon, and to Brandenburg, Germany - home of the last Spix's macaws. From deep underground where blue minerals grow into crystals to miles away in space where satellites gaze down at our "blue marble" planet, wherever we do find blue, it always has a story to tell.

©2019 Hoffman und Campe Verlag, Hamburg. English-language translation copyright by The Experiment, LLC. (P)2021 Tantor Art Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Physics Science Travel Writing & Commentary

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The overarching story/history of blue, in particular, throughout the history of earth, let alone our common modern’ scientific & aesthetic humans other animals and plant perspective, was infatuating and enchanting! A new s.t.e.A.m., aesthetic/scientific way of looking back at our short time here.

Update - Noted & big respect and thanks for the healthy perspective from the previous reviewer Lissa, well said.

BLUE scintillating & saturating a fascinating deep dive way beyond a simple color.

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the book made me look at the color blue in a whole different way. I will never look at the blue the same way ever again.

excellent

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Much interesting info about blue pigment, but the author’s cultural and gender arrogance detracted from the narrative and much enlightening information was overlooked, if it wasn’t Euro-centered

Interesting info, BUT

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