Green: The History of a Color. Michel Pastoureau

Green has been associated with all that is changeable and unstable for centuries: childhood, love, excitement, and even finance. It has been linked to the Roman emperor Nero, Islam, and environmental movements. Goethe called green the color of the middle class, the Bauhaus avant-garde effectively “blackened” it, and 19th-century scholars were convinced that the ancient Greeks did not distinguish between the colors.

French historian and medievalist Michel Pastoureau debunks numerous myths and explores the ambiguity of green, a color that only in the Romantic era was finally established as a symbol of nature. Once despised and marginalized, it has gradually won its place, becoming universal, calming, and ubiquitous in the modern world.