Adam Rogers ’92 showed his first glimmer of interest in the mysteries of color perception with a middle school science project. He simply colored in a square on a piece of paper, held it up and asked the class, “What color do you see?”

Most students saw red, but one replied, “Pink.” Decades later, the science writer delves deeper into the ways that humans relate to color in his new book, Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern. Here he explains a bit about how the book began, what he learned while writing it and what science journalism is like today.

PCM: Where did the idea for a book about the science of color come from?

Adam Rogers: As a science reporter at Newsweek in the ’90s, I found out about this pigment, this one molecule, this one chemical called titanium dioxide. It makes the color white.

It’s the super-light metal that you make artificial hips and Soviet-era submarines out of. Titanium, you take one atom of that, two atoms of oxygen, you stick those together and you get this stuff with a super-high refractive index, very opaque, very bright. And when you make it into a powder, if you do the right chemistry on it, you can make the color white, and it also becomes a ubiquitous chemical in all of the things around [us]. It’s in a lot of different kinds of paints; it’s in paper; it’s in a lot of plastics; it’s in pills and some foods.

I got obsessed with this idea that there was this one thing that was just everywhere—and essentially invisible. Except that it was also a color. I couldn’t shake that.

PCM: How long did it take you to write the book, and what are some of the places that it took you?

Adam Rogers: From the time I said, “OK, it’s going to be a book” to now is, I think, four years. I was late; I ran late on it. I went to the place in Cornwall, in England, where titanium was discovered, where somebody first identified that there was some new element in the dirt in the bed of a creek. I spent some time wandering around museums in Paris trying to see the colors instead of just seeing the art. I went to a professional coding conference in Indianapolis and tried to talk to the people who use color to put on things like cars.

There was some time spent in university labs, talking to folks about their research looking into the brains of monkeys and trying to understand what happens in those brains when they see color. In Boston I was talking to folks about trying to 3D print or paint forgeries of paintings that would be indistinguishable from the actual painting because of the way that they responded to the color around them.

PCM: Early in the book you write about color perception and tiny microbes and the possible origin of color perception. Can you tell us about that?

Adam Rogers: There has to be some early example of life that first started to be able to see color…[maybe] a totally different branch of life on the tree that’s billions of years old that would have been the first living things on Earth that turn out to have been able to distinguish between basically blue light and red light. Because one of those [colors] would have told them how to hide, and one of them would have been a place where they could hunt, where they could go look for food.

To do that, those critters had to develop the pigments that would respond differently, that would send a signal inside their own little single cells that would say either, “OK, now we’re getting this one wavelength; go toward it,” or “Now we’re getting this other wavelength; go away from it.” So the question then is how did they evolve that [ability]? The hypothesis is that it began as a form of photosynthesis—that you develop these very complicated molecules, versions of which still exist today in plants, that will be able to use the photons coming into the bodies of these microorganisms, of these microbes.

PCM: Do you ever find yourself out of your scientific depth?

Adam Rogers: All the time. I have no scientific depth in some respects. My formal science training was at Pomona, and that was it. I was a science, technology and society major. I have slightly more than half of a biology degree [and studied a lot of] history. That turned out to be really meaningful, because I find myself still writing STS stuff. Somebody had to point it out to me, that I’m still doing STS.

PCM: With the degree of science denial and the politicization of science and the general lack of scientific literacy in America today, it must be frustrating. Do you run up against that as a writer?

Adam Rogers: I do. Ten years ago I would have said, “Well, it’s on me to make sure that people understand my writing.…People won’t know what I’m necessarily talking about from the jump, and I have to compel them to come into a story and give them reasons to keep reading and then explain to them stuff that’s right and true.” I still think all of that. I think that some of this [science denial or limited scientific literacy] is the media’s fault, but some of it’s not. People have so little understanding now not only about science and the way that you might learn it in a classroom, but also about just who scientists are…and how you know something is maybe more true than something else. Societally, we have been terrible at explaining that to people. We don’t really teach it, we don’t really make it a priority, and I think we’re reaping some of that now.

PCM: What advice do you have for young people out there who are interested in pursuing a career in science writing?

Adam Rogers: I hope that they will. It is a hard time in journalism now, for social reasons and economic reasons. But I remain optimistic that even if the kind of places that do journalism will change, there still will be places to do journalism, and I think that writing about science—don’t tell any of my colleagues—I think it’s the most important beat. Don’t tell anybody I said that.

—Abridged and adapted from Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu

The debut novel by Tom Lin ’18, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection, is a reinvention of the American Western, this time starring a Chinese American assassin.

---

Someone to Watch Over Me

Set in 1947 Hollywood, this mystery thriller by Dan Bronson ’65 follows an actor turned studio publicist tasked with finding a missing actress.

---

Japan’s Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century

Politics Professor Tom Phuong Le posits that Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize is due to factors of demographics, culture and perspectives on security.

---

Bird versus Bulldozer: A Quarter-Century Conservation Battle in a Biodiversity Hotspot

Using the story of the coastal California gnatcatcher, ecologist Audrey L. Mayer ’94 offers an optimistic perspective on regional conservation planning strategies benefiting both humans and wildlife.

---

Building the Population Bomb

Emily Klancher Merchant ’01 writes the history of U.S. demography and population control, challenging the conventional notion that population growth in and of itself is inherently a problem.

---

Control the Narrative: The Executive’s Guide to Building, Pivoting and Repairing Your Reputation

Lida Citroën ’86 writes about the power of personal branding and offers advice on how to make your reputation an asset.

---

Parabellum

In this crime novel by Greg Hickey ’08, four individuals emerge as possible suspects in a deadly mass shooting in Chicago.

---

Project Inferno (Infiltration)

William W. King ’70 has penned a futuristic novel (the first in a series) about an ordinary household object that is weaponized to attack America.

---

Ruminations on a Parrot Named Cosmo

Betty Jean Craige ’68 was inspired by her African grey parrot to write 75 short humor essays about her pet’s language learning, animal consciousness and the cognitive similarities between parrots and humans.

---

The Mindfulness Sidekick: Mental Wellness to Maximize Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

For individuals with long-term depression, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is widely considered a breakthrough treatment, and in this book Amy Halloran-Steiner ’94 journeys with patients, teaching the medicine of mindfulness.

---

Water Music: Adventures of a Journeyman Surfer

David Rearwin ’62 started surfing 70 years ago. At the age of 80, he continues—and chronicles—his escapades at sea.

---

Time in Maps: From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era

Historian Caroline Winterer ’88 is co-editor of a volume that examines how maps from across the world have depicted time in inventive ways.

---

Tattoo on My Brain: A Neurologist’s Personal Battle Against Alzheimer’s Disease

Dr. Daniel Gibbs ’73 offers a memoir about his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s—the very disease he treated in patients for 25 years.

---

Out of Print: Mediating Information in the Novel and the Book

Julia Panko ’02 examines how the print book has fared with the proliferation of data across the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

Horse Brain, Human Brain
The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

This work on human and equine brains, by brain scientist and horsewoman Janet L. Jones ’84, was recently listed as one of Book Authority’s “Ten Best Human Brain Books to Read in 2021.”

---

My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites

Named to a New York Times list of  the “Best Poetry of 2020,” the daily journaling practice of S. Brook Corfman ’13 investigates the ordinary.

---

Leavetakings

Corinna Cook ’07 presents nine essays, all set in Alaska and posing the question of what coming and going can reveal about place.

---

Mountain Climber
A Memoir

After nearly six decades of climbing, Bill Katra ’68 recounts his mountain adventures, detailing his experiences and reflecting on the wisdom he’s gained from them over time.

---

ASPC Manual of Preventive Cardiology

Nathan D. Wong ’83 has co-edited an updated review on the current guidelines and practice standards for the clinical management of cardiovascular risk factors and prevention of cardiovascular diseases.

---

Not About Dinosaurs

This collection of poems by Linda Neal ’64 digs deep into matters of living, dying and extinction.

---

Survive
(The Atlantis Grail Book 4)

Vera Nazarian ’88 has released the fourth and final book in The Atlantis Grail series, in which under the threat of annihilation, the fate of the entire human species is at stake.

---

Posthuman Bliss?
The Failed Promise of Transhumanism

Susan B. Levin ’84 challenges transhumanists’—advocates of radical enhancement—claim that science and technology support their vision of posthumanity.

---

The City and the Wilderness
Indo-Persian Encounters in Southeast Asia

Professor of History Arash Khazeni recounts the journeys and microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at the turn of the 19th century.

The publishing information that accompanied last issue’s Book Talk with author Ronald Fleming ’63 was incorrect. Here is the correct information:

The Adventures of a Narrative Gardener:
Creating a Landscape of Memory
By Robert Lee Fleming
GILES | 168 pages | $39.95

The Arrest

Professor and noted author Jonathan Lethem’s most recent novel is speculative fiction about societal collapse, two siblings, a man who came between them and a nuclear-powered supercar.

---

Separate but Faithful:
The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture

Politics Professor Amanda Hollis-Brusky co-authors with Joshua C. Wilson the first book-length treatment of “Christian worldview” law schools and their impacts on law and politics, based on fieldwork and interviews with leaders of the Christian Right legal movement.

---

The Phantom Pattern Problem:
The Mirage of Big Data

Economics Professor Gary Smith and Jay Cordes ’93 pose the question as to whether data patterns are worth believing—and posit that the “evidence” is ultimately meaningless.

---

Ripples of Air:
Poems of Healing

Charlotte Digregorio ’75 offers hundreds of her award-winning poems, along with her essays on poetry.

---

Hunting Nature:
Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World

Thomas P. Hodge ’84 explores Ivan Turgenev’s relationship to nature through hunting—his life’s passion.

---

Signature

Hunter Dukes ’13 explores the cultural history of autographs through first-person recollections from his travels through California, England, Greece, Finland and Russia.

---

Reading Minds:
How Childhood Teaches Us to Understand People

Henry M. Wellman ’70, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, presents research on theory of mind and examines ideas about the frontiers of research, from robots to religion.

---

Modern Family:
The Untold Oral History of One of Television’s Groundbreaking Sitcoms

Marc Freeman ’89 tells the history of the popular TV show through the eyes of the cast, creators and crew.

---

The Power of the Impossible:
On Community and the Creative Life

Erik S. Roraback ’89 surveys cultural figures and icons like Spinoza and Ivan Lendl and examines global community formation and creativity.

The Browning of the New South

Jennifer A. Jones ’03 takes an ethnographic look at changing racial identities in an evolving­ Southern city.

---

The Sweeney Sisters

Lian Dolan ’87 returns with her biggest, boldest, most entertaining novel yet—a hilarious, heartfelt story about books, love, sisterhood and the surprises we discover in our DNA.

---

The Eye That Never Sleeps

Clifford Browder ’50 offers a classically told detective novel that creates a web of intrigue while giving the reader a tour of a bygone era of America through the filter of New York City.

---

Nontechnical Guide to Petroleum Geo­logy, Exploration, Drilling & Production

Norman J. Hyne ’61, in the new fourth edition of his widely used textbook, provides broad insight into the nature of gas and oil production today.

---

The Religion of Physics

Philip C. Groce ’62 melds science and religion into a conceptual framework that God can be defined as energy.

---

Aphrodite’s Pen

Jody Savage ’75, writing as Stella Fosse, seeks to empower older women writing about erotic experiences in life, the bedroom and beyond.

---

Devotional Thoughts on the Lord’s Supper, Offering and Prayer

Ronald Johnson ’71 compiles 64 talks given prior to the Lord’s Supper, 14 talks for the offering and two talks on prayer.

The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science

Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics Gary Smith and co-author Jay Cordes ’93 tell cautionary tales of data science successes and failures, showing readers how to distinguish between good data science and nonsense.

---

Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era

Alison Rose Jefferson ’80 explores how during the Jim Crow era in Southern California, a growing population of African Americans pioneered America’s “frontier of leisure” and worked to make recreational sites and public spaces open and inclusive.

---

Heartthrob
del Balboa Café al Apartheid and Back

Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Susana Chávez-Silverman has penned a memoir that is a love story woven together in both English and Spanish, traversing from San Francisco to South Africa and asking us to consider how things could have been.

---

Donuts Are Meant to be Eaten

Alex Cook ’82 introduces the Barton clan in this first of a family dramedy series that covers a range of experiences: from what it feels like to be an adolescent male in the late ’70s in the South to offering insight into the life of a disillusioned wife and mother in a post tech revolution world.

---

Dreaming of Arches National Park

This children’s book co-written and photographed by Grant Collier ’96 and set in Arches National Park, is a story of the adventures of Cayenne, a coyote that doesn’t like to sleep.

---

A Knowledge Representation Practionary: Guidelines Based on Charles Sanders Peirce

Mike Bergman ’74, web scientist and entrepreneur for a series of internet companies, writes of his experience in installing semantic technology and artificial intelligence projects for enterprise customers over many years.

---

Chasing Gods

This novel by Willard Berry ’61 is a chronicle of the calamitous life of his third great-grandfather, who lived from 1788-1852. Berry came across this ancestor’s strange life while doing genealogical research.

---

US Democracy Promotion in the Arab World: Beyond Interests vs. Ideals

Mieczysław (Mietek) Boduszyński, professor of politics and international relations and former U.S. diplomat goes beyond the question of whether the U.S. should promote democracy in the Arab world and pushes further to examine the why, where and how.

---

BOOK SUBMISSIONS

If you’ve had a book published and would like to submit it for inclusion in Bookmarks, please send a review copy to Sneha Abraham, PCM Book Editor, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsessions

Rachel Monroe ’06, hailed as one of the “queens of nonfiction,” by New York Magazine, pens the stories of four women’s obsession with true crime and explores our collective morbid fascination.

---

Frost Fair Dance

Dancer and poet Celestine Woo ’89 offers a book of poems that, as one editor praised, “glide across the page” —an apt description as Woo uses modern dance and movement as themes throughout her work.

---

Best Practices in Educational Therapy

Ann Parkinson Kaganoff ’58, a board-certified educational therapist and educator for six decades, offers strategies and solutions for novice and veteran educational therapists alike.

---

Doing Supportive Psychotherapy

John Battaglia ’80, professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, has written a guide for learners and professionals alike on how to forge meaningful, impactful therapeutic relationships with patients.

---

One Small Sun

The poetry of Paulann Petersen ’64 takes readers from Oregon to India, taps into memory and tells the tales of an aging woman’s life.

---

The Road Through San Judas

The inspiration for this novel by Robert Fraga ’61 came from his time as a volunteer in Northern Mexico, where he learned of the conflict between landless Mexican farmers and a wealthy Juárez family who wanted their land.

---

Can’t Stop Falling: A Caregiver’s Love Story

In a memoir written to inspire people helping loved ones who are suffering, W C Stephenson ’61 tells the story of his wife’s rare neurological disease and his role as her caregiver.

---

Forty Years a Forester

Professor of Environmental Analysis Char Miller edited an annotated edition of the memoir of Elers Koch, a key figure in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service with a major role in building relationships and policies that made the bureau the most respected in the federal government.

Collisions at the Crossroads:
How Place and Mobility Make Race

Genevieve Carpio ’05, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UCLA, examines policies and forces restricting free movement—from bicycle ordinances to incarceration—and how they constructed racial hierarchies in Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.

---

Luxury, Blue Lace

S. Brook Corfman ’13 offers poetry exploring the overlapping personalities that can be found in one person. His poems earned him a starred Publishers Weekly review, praising it as “a work of rare beauty and thoughtfulness.”

---

More Than Birding:
Observations from Antarctica, Madagascar, and Bhutan

In this travel memoir, Harriet Denison ’65 shares her adventures in birding, animal encounters and cultural experiences in breathtaking locations on three continents.

---

Learning to Be a Foreigner:
Field Notes from Sichuan

In this novel, Nancy E. Dollahite ’64 tells a love story between a woman and a country and a woman and a man, based on her experience living in China in the 980s.

---

Buzz Stories at Thirty Thousand Feet

David Price ’71, son of the late Harrison “Buzz” Price, writes about his father, best known for determining by mathema­tical formulas where to build Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

---

The Also-Rans:
One Step Short of the Presidency

David P. Green ’58 profiles and examines the candidates who didn’t make it to the White House, from Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

---

The Philosophical Baroque:
On Autopoietic Modernities

Erik S. Roraback ’89, who teaches critical theory, international cinema and U.S. literature at Charles University, reframes modernity as a multicentury baroque, as part of the Literary Modernism book series.

---

The Nature of Hope:
Grassroots Organizing, Environ­mental Justice, and Political Change

Professor of Environmental Analysis Char Miller is the co-editor of this collection of essays exploring how ordinary citizens have come together to organize action for environmental justice.

---

The Blue Wave Starts with Me:
A Volunteer’s Guide to Getting Out the Vote for Democrats
Ron Boyer ’76 penned a book for people asking themselves, What can I do to help elect Democrats?

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Business Chemistry:
Practical Magic for Crafting
Powerful Work Relationships
Kim Christfort ’96 and Suzanne Vickberg offer a guide to putting cognitive diversity to work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Dark Knowledge
In his historical novel, Clifford Browder ’50 writes about a young man in New York in the late 1860s investigating the illegal pre–Civil War slave trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Sea Change:
The Unfinished Agenda of the 1960s
Dorothy May Emerson ’65 pens personal stories about a young life lived on the edge of hope, change and possibility in California in the 1960s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Searching for My Heart:
Essays About Love
This book by Dawn Downey ’73 contains stories with themes of alienation, shame and the self-awareness that leads to love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

No Hard Feelings
Emotions at Work (and How They Help Us Succeed)
Liz Fosslien ’09 and Mollie West Duffy take a look at emotions in the workplace and how to navigate them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Summary Execution:
The Seattle Assassinations of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes
Michael Withey ’68, P’91 tells a true story that could be a crime thriller: a double murder replete with assassins, FBI informants, murdered witnesses and a foreign dictator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

The Power of the Impossible:
On Community and the Creative Life
Erik S. Roraback ’89 surveys cultural figures and icons like Spinoza and Ivan Ledi and examines global community formation and creativity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Peregrinations:
Walking in American Literature
Amy T. Hamilton ’98 explores physical bodies and movement in American stories and history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Sara When She Chooses
Deedra Cooper ’76, who writes under the name Cat Jenkins, takes the fictional character Sara on a trip to her grandmother’s house—a primitive home that she hates to visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

The American Road Trip and American
Political Thought
Professor of Politics Susan McWilliams Barndt shows how Americans have long used road trips not only as escapism but also as a vehicle to explore questions about American politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

San Antonio:
A Tricentennial History
W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History Char Miller has written the first general history of San Antonio, Texas, the nation’s seventh-largest city and one shaped by environmental, social, political and cultural pressures.