Georgia Sargeant

I like "The Golden Thread." The topic is intriguing and the writing is charming and fairly clear. But it could have been so much better! It desperately needs illustration by photographs and diagrams to portray the ancient traces and more modern industry that St. Clair is describing. Show me, don't just tell me. I don't know whether this failure comes from the publisher's restrictions or the writer's limitations, but this neglect is ridiculous with today's print technology, to say nothing of electronic media. "The Golden Thread" could be fascinating and instead it's just kinda nice. This isn't the first time St. Clair's work has been undermined by flabby support. Her earlier book "The Secret Lives of Color," a cozy chat on the history of pigments and dyes in fabrics, at least showed strips of the particular shades she was discussing. But it was left in the dust by the art-oriented "The Brilliant History of Color in Art," by Victoria Finlay, and the science-oriented "The Secret Language of Color," by Joann Eckstut and Arielle Eckstut, which came out around the same time. Both of those books were lavishly illustrated and are simply transporting. St. Clair's work deserves comparable visual enrichment.