He is not well-remembered, but maybe he'd prefer it that way? He was a man of great humility, great persistence (against much snobbery from his purist chemistry pals, he scaled up his laboratory error into a factory) and ultimately just a man. I think maybe the author missed that the modern chemical industry is not a matter of synthetic versus natural - there is much to be said for both, and chemical companies understand this, but this book was written a few years before the sustainability movement really took off.īest of all though, this is a story of a very bright, curious young man, who whilst seeking a synthetic source for the treatment of malaria, which would have saved millions of lives, stumbled upon something, which, whilst appearing nothing more than frippery, actually ending up providing the chemical stepping stones to some of the most valuable substances we use today, including medicines.

These are not new at all, but rather standing on the shoulders of those who have come before them in creating the synthetic versions of 'natural' products. It touches on the inception of environmental regulation (even then, you couldn't get away with killing your neighbors for long), and made me think with some cynicism of the 'new' sustainability and 'eco' movements.

It touches on women's increasing independence and their spending power (their whims for a color drove the creation of a completely new industry), and the increasing spending power of the middle and working classes, and how they sought to use their money to improve the quality of their lives through increased color. It touches on nationalism (Germany believed in it, England believed it but almost too late to save itself). It really lets you feel how Victorians thought they could change the world (and actually did), and how that realization came to a crashing halt with increasing German aggression. Incidentally, this book gives some of the best insights into the Victorian age, and what motivated great Victorians. The chemical industry gets a bad wrap these days, sometimes fairly (chemical companies have done some pretty stupid/heinous things) and sometimes unfairly (trust me, life would be COMPLETELY different and much, much more difficult and dangerous without the chemicals we all use today perfectly safely), but this book actually tells the story of how the chemical industry developed (but in a non-tedious way), and how it was driven and why, and about some of the incredibly smart men who created some pretty amazing stuff in a wide range of fields. BUT, it's a great narrative of how one small moment in time, a mistake, an error, happened to completely revolutionize our lives today. I have a confession to make - I work for a chemical company (not making dyes though), and used to be an engineer in a former existence, so I understood a fair amount of what this book says about chemistry.

Mauve by Simon Garfield