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The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960
From the mid-19th century, many of the most celebrated moments and personalities in modern history – from Gettysburg to Hiroshima, and from Lincoln to Churchill – have been captured for posterity by the camera lens.
Marina Amaral uses digital techniques, underpinned by painstaking research, to colourise 200 such images embracing an entire century of world history. The results are revelatory, transforming the monochrome of early photography into the vibrant hues of real life. Statesmen and soldiers, as well as the faces of hundreds of ordinary people, thus appear in dramatically vivid guise. The images are organized in ten chronological chapters. Each image is accompanied by a 200-word caption by best-selling historian Dan Jones, telling the stories behind them.
A fusion of amazing pictures and well-chosen words, The Colour of Time offers a unique – and often beautiful – perspective on the past.
432 pages, Paperback
First published August 9, 2018
195 people are currently reading
2267 people want to read
About the author
Dan Jones
65 books5,583 followersDan Jones is a NYT bestselling author and broadcaster. His books, which include The Templars, Henry V, The Plantagenets and Powers & Thrones, have sold more than 2 million copies and are published in 23 languages. He is the author of the Essex Dogs novel trilogy. Dan writes and hosts the popular weekly Sony Music Entertainment podcast This Is History. He has presented dozens of television documentaries, including the popular Netflix series Secrets of Great British Castles, and has executive produced and consulted on a number of films and television shows including Anne Boleyn (Channel 5/Sony Pictures Television) and Knightfall (A+E/History). His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post; for a decade he was a columnist for the London Evening Standard. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 2025 was appointed to the Board of Trustees of Historic Royal Palaces.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 137 reviews
September 9, 2018
This is my new favourite world history book.
I bought it to marvel at the fascinating digitally-coloured photographs from the 1800s and kept it for the historical insights behind the them.
If you're not completely familiar with world history, this book gives informative nutshell descriptions that help us to understand the past and how it has shaped and given context to the world as it is today. The Colour of Time covers the significant events that occurred in the last two centuries, from world monarchies, empires, colonialism, disasters, politics, wars and battles (particularly the American Civil War and the World Wars 1 and 2) right up into the pop culture of the later mid 1900s.
I'd expected that The Colour of Time might be a short and brief book with a small selection of photographs but I was wrong. The book is huge and can be enjoyed not just in an afternoon but over a long period. I have read this book and now it is being passed around every single one of my family members.
What I would love to see next would be a series of books like this that are dedicated to individual countries like the UK, US, Russia, Germany, etc or perhaps a book that focuses on the World War 1 and 2.
I bought it to marvel at the fascinating digitally-coloured photographs from the 1800s and kept it for the historical insights behind the them.
If you're not completely familiar with world history, this book gives informative nutshell descriptions that help us to understand the past and how it has shaped and given context to the world as it is today. The Colour of Time covers the significant events that occurred in the last two centuries, from world monarchies, empires, colonialism, disasters, politics, wars and battles (particularly the American Civil War and the World Wars 1 and 2) right up into the pop culture of the later mid 1900s.
I'd expected that The Colour of Time might be a short and brief book with a small selection of photographs but I was wrong. The book is huge and can be enjoyed not just in an afternoon but over a long period. I have read this book and now it is being passed around every single one of my family members.
What I would love to see next would be a series of books like this that are dedicated to individual countries like the UK, US, Russia, Germany, etc or perhaps a book that focuses on the World War 1 and 2.
October 6, 2018
Beautiful, Absolutely fucking gorgeous. The photos are amazing. History has always been pretty 'alive' for me, because I love history and it is pretty much all I ever want to read about. But a book like this might do wonders for someone less inclined to pick up a history text. Photos you've seen a million times in black and white, major world-changing, beautiful, devastating, heartbreaking events captured on film, are now in living color, and for the briefest of moments you can imagine yourself in that place, in that time. Fantastic work.
+++++++++++++++++
I CANT WAIT!!
+++++++++++++++++
I CANT WAIT!!
August 11, 2018
Incredible book. I bought it for the photos but stayed for the explanations which are so well written, clear and well-informed. Monarchies, revolutions, politics, wars, pop culture and so much more is covered in this book which spans almost 100 years. I can't emphasise enough just how much I've learnt not just about England but America and the rest of the World. I'll keep this on my coffee table for years to come, if you're considering buying it I'd recommend you do it.
June 16, 2023
It’s strange, whenever I see old black and white photos from the early days of photography, I have a tendency to think of the people in them as not quite human. The grey monochrome of early photography somehow seems to rob them of their humanity and their vibrancy. I tend to recall the subjects of these ancient photos as grey semi-human beings who live in a far off land called “history.”
This book is filled with delightful colorized pictures and short tales of so many of the landmark people, places and historical events that have been with me since grammar school.
Dan Jones’s book has done an amazing job of using colorization to put real flesh and bone on people from the past. He and his co-author take black & white pictures and beautifully add subtle color. It’s startling to see Abraham Lincoln in real color and realize that he was a walking, talking human, just like the rest of us.
This book really got me thinking about these people as truly mortal and not just impersonal icons of a time gone by.
This book is filled with delightful colorized pictures and short tales of so many of the landmark people, places and historical events that have been with me since grammar school.
Dan Jones’s book has done an amazing job of using colorization to put real flesh and bone on people from the past. He and his co-author take black & white pictures and beautifully add subtle color. It’s startling to see Abraham Lincoln in real color and realize that he was a walking, talking human, just like the rest of us.
This book really got me thinking about these people as truly mortal and not just impersonal icons of a time gone by.
October 4, 2021
200 colourised old photos by Marina Amaral with accompanying context by Dan Jones. A fascinating but frustrating book - the creators selected these from 10,000 possible photos and (to me) they feel heavily weighted to official portraiture and war photography, with not an awful lot of pictures of everyday life, except where said life intersects grand events like the Great Depression, or Partition. One result is that it's a book with very few women and children, giving a sense of the 100 or so years covered as a ghastly hecatomb of war and famine. I mean, it *was*, and that's how photographers' reputations are made - but it wasn't JUST that.
There's also a frustrating lack of specific detail on each photograph, in favour of a broad historical sweep. Confronted with the stare of a colourised, infuriated Hitler, I turn to the text to be told of his many crimes but not where he was when the photo was taken and why he was wearing such ludicrous shorts. (For all that the overall balance of selection is off, for some subjects the choices are dead-on - allowing last century's monsters no grandeur)
Even so, colourising these photos can achieve startlingly vivid effects, especially in making faces and their expressions come more sharply into focus. In the earliest photos there's a stiffness caused partly by long exposure times, partly by wariness, and the added colour makes the fuzziness of detail in some early pictures starker. As the 19th century continues, it seems like people learn to relax around cameras more, letting more humanity in - it's here that the sequence of official portraits of generals, monarchs etc becomes particularly irksome. By the 20th century, there are regular moments of sudden empathy, as the distancing effects of monochrome are stripped away from familiar images of soldiers, munitions workers, and the newly liberated inmates of a concentration camp dormitory, staring at their rescuers (and the readers) with wary, knowing but blazingly alive eyes.
There's also a frustrating lack of specific detail on each photograph, in favour of a broad historical sweep. Confronted with the stare of a colourised, infuriated Hitler, I turn to the text to be told of his many crimes but not where he was when the photo was taken and why he was wearing such ludicrous shorts. (For all that the overall balance of selection is off, for some subjects the choices are dead-on - allowing last century's monsters no grandeur)
Even so, colourising these photos can achieve startlingly vivid effects, especially in making faces and their expressions come more sharply into focus. In the earliest photos there's a stiffness caused partly by long exposure times, partly by wariness, and the added colour makes the fuzziness of detail in some early pictures starker. As the 19th century continues, it seems like people learn to relax around cameras more, letting more humanity in - it's here that the sequence of official portraits of generals, monarchs etc becomes particularly irksome. By the 20th century, there are regular moments of sudden empathy, as the distancing effects of monochrome are stripped away from familiar images of soldiers, munitions workers, and the newly liberated inmates of a concentration camp dormitory, staring at their rescuers (and the readers) with wary, knowing but blazingly alive eyes.
September 5, 2018
I was skeptical at first when I received this book from a colleague. Coloured photos of statesmen and soldier, Kings and Queens didn't do much for me as a concept. But the pictures are crafted with such care and artfully portrayed with attention given to historical context. It's a cliche, but it really does bring the past to life. You can immediately tell this was a labour of love, and it cannot help but humanize your perceptions of people and events known to most of us as anecdotes in history textbooks.
November 6, 2019
This is a stunningly beautiful history book, that has taken as its inspiration a selection of old black and white photographs, which have (following extensive research) been painstakingly coloured by illustrator Marina Amaral.
Each decade from 1850 to 1960 is represented first by a time-line of most important events around the world occurring then, followed by a selection of photographs of that time along with vignettes of people, quotes and happenings.
Although a lot of major events and prominent people are dealt with, there are also many pictures of ‘ordinary’ people and extraordinary situations, edifices being built, cities being destroyed, the dead, the dying and the living. All types of human life and existence are represented in this esoteric history of the world.
I haven’t read every word in the book, but I have been through every page, and admired the superbly coloured photographs. The sections I have read in full were very interesting, and often new to me.
This is not a book to be read cover to cover – but one to be dipped into time and time again. The book goes to show, that history need not be in black and white – but can be as vivid and as riveting as the present. It also shows how fascinating even the tiniest details of the past can be.
This book was recommended to me by a member of our pub quiz team. When I searched for it on-line, I had expected it to be well outside my price range, but was amazed at how reasonably priced it was – and snapped up a copy immediately. It would make a wonderful (affordable) present for anyone who has even a passing interest in history.
Each decade from 1850 to 1960 is represented first by a time-line of most important events around the world occurring then, followed by a selection of photographs of that time along with vignettes of people, quotes and happenings.
Although a lot of major events and prominent people are dealt with, there are also many pictures of ‘ordinary’ people and extraordinary situations, edifices being built, cities being destroyed, the dead, the dying and the living. All types of human life and existence are represented in this esoteric history of the world.
I haven’t read every word in the book, but I have been through every page, and admired the superbly coloured photographs. The sections I have read in full were very interesting, and often new to me.
This is not a book to be read cover to cover – but one to be dipped into time and time again. The book goes to show, that history need not be in black and white – but can be as vivid and as riveting as the present. It also shows how fascinating even the tiniest details of the past can be.
This book was recommended to me by a member of our pub quiz team. When I searched for it on-line, I had expected it to be well outside my price range, but was amazed at how reasonably priced it was – and snapped up a copy immediately. It would make a wonderful (affordable) present for anyone who has even a passing interest in history.
Want to read
March 2, 2020
I know color adds new dimensions.
(this one doesn't look Lincoln's murderer, he was, though)
This was the real thing:
June 15, 2022
The Color of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960 by Dan Jones and Marina Amaral is a great book that shines a spotlight on a great selection of the many talented and successful women that have lived during the mid19th-20th century. I loved it.
This is such a great compilation of famous, and not as famous, women that lived and made their mark during the mid 1800s-1900s. The book breaks it down by occupation, or area of talent, and the images that accompany the selections are just stunning.
This is such an amazing example of so many of the unsung heroines that have lived, worked, loved, and contributed to the world and it is awesome that they are discussed and recognized. Just wonderful!
5/5 stars
Thank you NG and Pegasus Books for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.
I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 9/6/22.
This is such a great compilation of famous, and not as famous, women that lived and made their mark during the mid 1800s-1900s. The book breaks it down by occupation, or area of talent, and the images that accompany the selections are just stunning.
This is such an amazing example of so many of the unsung heroines that have lived, worked, loved, and contributed to the world and it is awesome that they are discussed and recognized. Just wonderful!
5/5 stars
Thank you NG and Pegasus Books for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.
I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 9/6/22.
December 30, 2018
Simply amazing. The colorized photographs are mesmerizing, and make me feel closer to people of the past. There's something about a color photograph that just makes the imagination come alive. I liked the accompanying bits of information, not too dense and well written. This book has been meticulously researched and it can be felt in every aspect. Last but not least, I thoroughly appreciate the authors' decision to incorporate -all- continents in this book, even though it's a little Western world heavy in some places.
September 20, 2018
I've been following Marina Amaral's work on social media for a couple of years. The Color of Time lives up to the high standards she has set. An outstanding photographic history reference.
xx-dnf-skim-reference
November 28, 2025Great concept, questionable execution. I'm halfway and I see plenty errors (a man at a railroad station sitting in mid-air for example). And too many generals & other corollaries of war. And too few images that are worthy of color because the subject is drab anyway.
The history part of the text looks interesting, perhaps, but the font is too small in this heavy large book for me to read w/out getting a headache. Anyway, I picked it up for the pictures, because I know the past wasn't sepia-toned....
---
Done.
Ack.
Even more generals, dead bodies, etc. The history is that of wars, not of people.
A few images provided relief, like flappers on a beach, but even that was disturbing as a man measured a young woman's swim skirt to make sure it was long enough.
And still, even more images that were brown, black, gray, and did not benefit from colorization.
November 2025
The history part of the text looks interesting, perhaps, but the font is too small in this heavy large book for me to read w/out getting a headache. Anyway, I picked it up for the pictures, because I know the past wasn't sepia-toned....
---
Done.
Ack.
Even more generals, dead bodies, etc. The history is that of wars, not of people.
A few images provided relief, like flappers on a beach, but even that was disturbing as a man measured a young woman's swim skirt to make sure it was long enough.
And still, even more images that were brown, black, gray, and did not benefit from colorization.
November 2025
December 10, 2018
Een boek die ik voornamelijk heb gekozen vanwege de foto's. Ik hou van foto's van vroeger en vind het geweldig dat mensen die tegenwoordig kleur kunnen geven. Ik heb de teksten naast de foto's niet altijd gelezen, vaak bevattten ze niks nieuws en het was ook nog eens niet altijd erg interessant geschreven. De foto's waren erg interessant, al hoefde ik sommige dingen nou niet echt te zien (zoals mensen die dood zijn, bloed hier en daar).
Zeker een boek dat ik zou aanraden voor de foto's.
Zeker een boek dat ik zou aanraden voor de foto's.
April 9, 2019
This book was fascinating and unsettling. I had never before read a history book entirely centered on specific points of time and space, moments captured on film. I was asked, again and again, to examine vivid colorized photographs of kings, peasants, rebels, battlefields, streets, ships, natural disasters, buildings, villains, heroes, politicians, ordinary people, corpses. This wasn't a history that felt faded and distant; this was a history that felt intimate and dangerously present.
I don't give it 5 stars, because I kept wishing that the writing were a bit clearer. Granted, the author had a lot of complicated material to explain in just a few words. (Wikipedia was helpful when I needed more background information than the book could reasonably give.) But there were passages where the writing was garbled and needlessly confusing. The quality of the colorization also seemed uneven to me. Many photographs were gorgeous and perfect, but in some photographs the color seemed a bit off.
Those are quibbles though. The book was well worth reading. It certainly expanded my mind and changed my perspective on the years that it covered.
I don't give it 5 stars, because I kept wishing that the writing were a bit clearer. Granted, the author had a lot of complicated material to explain in just a few words. (Wikipedia was helpful when I needed more background information than the book could reasonably give.) But there were passages where the writing was garbled and needlessly confusing. The quality of the colorization also seemed uneven to me. Many photographs were gorgeous and perfect, but in some photographs the color seemed a bit off.
Those are quibbles though. The book was well worth reading. It certainly expanded my mind and changed my perspective on the years that it covered.
September 26, 2019
Reading "The Colour of Time" a book of historical photographs restored to color. Real cool stuff. "The world has always been as vivid, immediate and colourful as it seems to us today. Yet vivid and 'real' is seldom the way we see the past now. Photography for its first century operated in black and white. The view behind us is partial and faded. This book is an attempt to restore brilliance to a desaturated world. It is a history in colour."
May 29, 2020
Absolutely breathtaking photographs and engaging historical explanations.
April 4, 2019
Such an amazing, concise modern history.
The photos were very well chosen, and brought to life by appearing in colour.
What an incredible century. Hard to believe that these events were recent history.
The photos were very well chosen, and brought to life by appearing in colour.
What an incredible century. Hard to believe that these events were recent history.
May 5, 2019
Excellent rare photographs redone in full-color digital renditions with just enough accompanying information.
September 8, 2018
A stunning work of art - illustrator Marina Amaral has painstakingly brought colour (and life) to black & white photos of iconic moments in history. The detail is just amazing; so amazing that you sometimes forget that the image didn't always have colour.
Jones' historical blurbs that accompany the photos are just the right mix of information and accessibility. You actually feel you're learning something but, at the same, are not overwhelmed by fact.
This is definitely a book I will keep on my shelves and re-read multiple times.
Jones' historical blurbs that accompany the photos are just the right mix of information and accessibility. You actually feel you're learning something but, at the same, are not overwhelmed by fact.
This is definitely a book I will keep on my shelves and re-read multiple times.
September 2, 2018
What a Fascinating book !!
A New History of the World 1850 - 1960.
This book is jointly produced by Dan Jones and Marina Amaral. Each photograph snaps a moment in history and Dan gives an account of the circumstances and events surrounding that photograph and time.
Marina is a Brazilian artist who has perfected the art of the colourisation of historical photographs following extensive research and brings historical account through photographs to a new dimension.
This is a fascinating account of the past which is spellbinding in both narrative and pictures.
I have learned so much on reading this book and would highly recommend it.
A New History of the World 1850 - 1960.
This book is jointly produced by Dan Jones and Marina Amaral. Each photograph snaps a moment in history and Dan gives an account of the circumstances and events surrounding that photograph and time.
Marina is a Brazilian artist who has perfected the art of the colourisation of historical photographs following extensive research and brings historical account through photographs to a new dimension.
This is a fascinating account of the past which is spellbinding in both narrative and pictures.
I have learned so much on reading this book and would highly recommend it.
January 18, 2021
*chef's kiss*
August 16, 2018
This is a masterpiece with it's beautifully colorized photos and interesting history in quotes and short descriptions which accompany the photos. It covers the time period starting when photography was viewed as an important media for documenting history, up until the time when probably color photos began to replace black and white. As with any history book, the authors had to select (with around 100 years to cover!) the photos to include. They did a good job covering the globe, including well known and lesser known events and figures in history. This is a beautiful addition to your library, good for reading in small bits, just leafing through the photos, or enjoying its entirety.
September 4, 2019
Originally published online at BORG.com.
People have been colorizing photographs nearly as far back as the invention of photographs in the early 19th century. Hand-painted photography took personal photographs from cold and lifeless to something more real, vivid and exciting. Although methods for actually developing photographs in color existed as far back as the 1860s, it was rarely done. Mid-twentieth century colorizing became a popular pastime, and so many people can look back to family portraits in color (by hand, with pencil or other coloring) regularly found in the 1940s and 1950s, just as color film became more available to the public. Attempts of the past to accurately add color to historical images sometimes were made with reference to actual objects or people–such as matching eye color and hair color via reference to paintings or contemporary written descriptions–to ensure the accuracy of color choices. But no single effort has been made to accurately colorize historical photographs until recent digital technologies made it more possible. Brazilian artist Marina Amaral has become well-known for her coloring work, and she has teamed up with historian and journalist Dan Jones to create an extraordinary new history text, The Color of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960. It is a must-read for history buffs and anyone who could use a brush up on their history knowledge.
Readers first will be attracted to The Color of Time (titled The Colour of Time in European editions) first for Amaral’s 200 colorized images (she has colorized images seen in this book plus many more). But the book’s value is equaled in Jones’s history text, which stitches together photographs of important subjects from the beginning of the tintype to 1960, when black and white was still prevalent, with a chronology of every major world event and figure in between. So The Color of Time is, in a sense, a world history textbook (this one is ideal for teaching high school world history or as a supplement to a first year college history survey course) with the added benefit of bringing historical figures to life via color. Amaral has noted it is nearly impossible to perfectly capture every color correctly (you’d need historical access to every item in the camera’s lens), but Amaral has researched the clothing, objects, and people who are the subjects of this book to get as close as possible. Historical figures–many presented for the first time in color–include Darwin, Marx, Lincoln, Tolstoy, Edison, Stanley, Schliemann, Pope Pius IX, Sitting Bull, Barton, Twain, Mata Hari, Curie, Einstein, Villa, the Red Baron, Rasputin, Louis Armstrong, Lenin, Stalin, Michael Collins, Elie Wiesel, Hitler, Mussolini, Earhart, FDR, Mau, Gandhi, Churchill, Elvis Presley, JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Castro, Guevara, and Mandela.
A surprising number of these photos take on a new life in color. A spectrum of color in the Times Square photo of a sailor and a nurse in an embrace on VJ Day brings out the happy dispositions of nearby watchers. The blue sky in a Wright Flyer image accentuates the fragile, finely geometric balance of the famous inventors’ first airplane. A colorized image from 1900 of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid makes them look like movie stars of the Golden Age of cinema. Perhaps nothing compares to the beauty of England’s Crystal Palace in 1854–you can almost smell the clear, blue water in the great pool. Another image shows the tan wooden infrastructure of the Statue of Liberty’s hand, while being built. The famous 1895 Montparnasse rail crash is even more jolting in color. But the strangest jolt may come from an image of a handsome young man that could be a young Clint Eastwood–it is instead of a man days before his hanging, for stabbing President Lincoln’s secretary of state while his co-conspirator killed the President a few streets away.
Readers may try to find some commonality between an image of Queen Victoria in 1854 and her great, great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II taking the throne in 1952. The pair bookends this volume, and demonstrates a lean toward a greater number of British historical events covered by the authors. That said, world leaders and events are depicted from all over (many demonstrating the long tenure of the British Empire): the Romanovs, the last Empress of China, samurai of Japan, slaves in America, the Sultan of Zanzibar, Hawaii’s last queen, Queen Min of Korea, King Faisal of Iraq, Nepalese at Everest, the Ethiopian emperor, and the king of Saudi Arabia. Some of the colorful updates will seem more familiar–JFK and the First Lady were pictured in thousands of color photos in the 1960s, and other U.S. presidents like Lincoln and FDR have been the subjects of countless color-added marketing images and other uses over the past century.
As with any world history text, expect what you’d imagine of a century of the human condition–lots of war, lots of deaths–dead bodies from human savagery, hate, neglect, and war dot the pages of this historical account. It also includes benchmarks of technology, science, and medicine, and the evolution of seaships, planes, trains, cars, and even tanks and other tools of warfare from tomahawks to nuclear bombs.
The book covers politics and conflict very well. But The Color of Time begs for a second and third volume, perhaps with greater emphases on the arts, literature, culture, and society.
It’s a good history refresher for literally everyone, and completely interesting to see these figures and events in a new way. The Color of Time is available now in a hardcover edition from Pegasus Books.
People have been colorizing photographs nearly as far back as the invention of photographs in the early 19th century. Hand-painted photography took personal photographs from cold and lifeless to something more real, vivid and exciting. Although methods for actually developing photographs in color existed as far back as the 1860s, it was rarely done. Mid-twentieth century colorizing became a popular pastime, and so many people can look back to family portraits in color (by hand, with pencil or other coloring) regularly found in the 1940s and 1950s, just as color film became more available to the public. Attempts of the past to accurately add color to historical images sometimes were made with reference to actual objects or people–such as matching eye color and hair color via reference to paintings or contemporary written descriptions–to ensure the accuracy of color choices. But no single effort has been made to accurately colorize historical photographs until recent digital technologies made it more possible. Brazilian artist Marina Amaral has become well-known for her coloring work, and she has teamed up with historian and journalist Dan Jones to create an extraordinary new history text, The Color of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960. It is a must-read for history buffs and anyone who could use a brush up on their history knowledge.
Readers first will be attracted to The Color of Time (titled The Colour of Time in European editions) first for Amaral’s 200 colorized images (she has colorized images seen in this book plus many more). But the book’s value is equaled in Jones’s history text, which stitches together photographs of important subjects from the beginning of the tintype to 1960, when black and white was still prevalent, with a chronology of every major world event and figure in between. So The Color of Time is, in a sense, a world history textbook (this one is ideal for teaching high school world history or as a supplement to a first year college history survey course) with the added benefit of bringing historical figures to life via color. Amaral has noted it is nearly impossible to perfectly capture every color correctly (you’d need historical access to every item in the camera’s lens), but Amaral has researched the clothing, objects, and people who are the subjects of this book to get as close as possible. Historical figures–many presented for the first time in color–include Darwin, Marx, Lincoln, Tolstoy, Edison, Stanley, Schliemann, Pope Pius IX, Sitting Bull, Barton, Twain, Mata Hari, Curie, Einstein, Villa, the Red Baron, Rasputin, Louis Armstrong, Lenin, Stalin, Michael Collins, Elie Wiesel, Hitler, Mussolini, Earhart, FDR, Mau, Gandhi, Churchill, Elvis Presley, JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Castro, Guevara, and Mandela.
A surprising number of these photos take on a new life in color. A spectrum of color in the Times Square photo of a sailor and a nurse in an embrace on VJ Day brings out the happy dispositions of nearby watchers. The blue sky in a Wright Flyer image accentuates the fragile, finely geometric balance of the famous inventors’ first airplane. A colorized image from 1900 of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid makes them look like movie stars of the Golden Age of cinema. Perhaps nothing compares to the beauty of England’s Crystal Palace in 1854–you can almost smell the clear, blue water in the great pool. Another image shows the tan wooden infrastructure of the Statue of Liberty’s hand, while being built. The famous 1895 Montparnasse rail crash is even more jolting in color. But the strangest jolt may come from an image of a handsome young man that could be a young Clint Eastwood–it is instead of a man days before his hanging, for stabbing President Lincoln’s secretary of state while his co-conspirator killed the President a few streets away.
Readers may try to find some commonality between an image of Queen Victoria in 1854 and her great, great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II taking the throne in 1952. The pair bookends this volume, and demonstrates a lean toward a greater number of British historical events covered by the authors. That said, world leaders and events are depicted from all over (many demonstrating the long tenure of the British Empire): the Romanovs, the last Empress of China, samurai of Japan, slaves in America, the Sultan of Zanzibar, Hawaii’s last queen, Queen Min of Korea, King Faisal of Iraq, Nepalese at Everest, the Ethiopian emperor, and the king of Saudi Arabia. Some of the colorful updates will seem more familiar–JFK and the First Lady were pictured in thousands of color photos in the 1960s, and other U.S. presidents like Lincoln and FDR have been the subjects of countless color-added marketing images and other uses over the past century.
As with any world history text, expect what you’d imagine of a century of the human condition–lots of war, lots of deaths–dead bodies from human savagery, hate, neglect, and war dot the pages of this historical account. It also includes benchmarks of technology, science, and medicine, and the evolution of seaships, planes, trains, cars, and even tanks and other tools of warfare from tomahawks to nuclear bombs.
The book covers politics and conflict very well. But The Color of Time begs for a second and third volume, perhaps with greater emphases on the arts, literature, culture, and society.
It’s a good history refresher for literally everyone, and completely interesting to see these figures and events in a new way. The Color of Time is available now in a hardcover edition from Pegasus Books.
August 14, 2018
I could not put this book down! It vividly narrates well known and lesser known parts of history in amazing images that brings history alive 😊😊
February 2, 2021
En fantastisk bok! Kreativt upplagd och fascinerande bilder. Jag gillar att boken hade en balans mellan stora historiska händelser, och händelser mindre kända. Jag lärde mig mycket, 5/5
May 27, 2019
Released in hardcover in August 2018 and now available in paperback, The Colour of Time, by historian Dan Jones and artist Marina Amaral, is a collection of 200 colourised photographs taken between 1850 and 1960. With accompanying extended captions, this is a visually rewarding overview of personalities and major moments in world history, from the Crimean War to the space age.
A Northern lens reveals interesting insights.
There is a statue of Queen Victoria in the grounds at the front of Belfast City Hall. While many may be familiar with seeing photographic images of her in her later life, in 1854 a series of portraits was commissioned by her husband, Prince Albert. Aged 35, Queen Victoria had already worn the crown for half her life. Of the image above (p. 19), the Queen noted in her diary that she “was very successfully photographed, but it took a long time”.
Built in Belfast, the RMS Titanic sank on her maiden voyage to New York City, on 14 April 1912. There were 1,316 passengers and nearly 1,000 crew; 705 survived. This image (p. 230) shows newsboy Ned Parfett selling the Evening News outside the London office of the White Star Line shipping company, which was cleared of negligence in two official inquiries. Parfett, as a British soldier, was killed in France in 1918.
The Battle of the Somme was a five-month clash along a 24km front. On the first day, 1 July 1916, the British Army lost nearly 60,000 men. The 36th (Ulster) Division was the only division of the British corps to achieve the objectives of the opening day; it captured a long section of the German front. Shells tore the woods of the Somme Valley to ribbons, which this image shows (p. 254). By the end of this battle, some 600,000 were killed or wounded on the Allied side, including 5,500 from the Ulster Division.
A rebellion for Irish independence also took place in 1916. After the First World War, the Irish Repubican Army found guerilla battles with the British Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, and other auxiliaries. This ended with the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Michael Collins, a key architect of the treaty, took on the military command of the new Irish Free State, which is shown in this image (p. 280). He was assassinated 15 days after this photo was taken.
During the Second World War, Hitler used air assaults, which targeted civilian and industrial locations in London, Hull, Liverpool, and Glasgow. It is remiss of the authors not to cite Belfast, where 1,000 were killed by Blitz raids. This image (p. 359) is a staged photograph, to emphasise the plight of children during the bombing campaign.
We have become familiar with the annual Christmas message delivered by Queen Elizabeth II. This image (p. 410) shows her first Christmas broadcast, by radio on 25 December 1952, from the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. This tradition began by her grandfather George V, in 1932.
In February 1953, violent storms in the North Sea caused flooding in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. During the weekend of 31 January to 1 February, sea levels rose by as much as 5.6m, causing widespread damage. An estimated 30,000 animals were killed by the flooding, which this image depicts (p. 414). More than 2,500 people died, including 133 passengers and crew of the Princess Victoria car ferry, which sank off Northern Ireland in the North Channel. The wreckage lies five miles from the Copeland Islands.
The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a supranational economic treaty created in the aftermath of the Second World War. This 1957 image (p. 418) shows a reception in Luxembourg being addressed by René Mayer, a senior ECSC official. The ECSC was the precursor to the European Economic Community and, in turn, the European Union.
This selection of colourised images from world history shows how local and global events are interdependent -- we affect and are affected by movements of history. This set represents epochs of colonial empire, rebellion, world wars, natural catastrophes, and international cooperation. What images will capture the essence of our future history, say, of man-made disasters and retrenchment?
Originally published at Mr Ulster: http://mrulster.com/2019/05/27/book-r...
A Northern lens reveals interesting insights.
There is a statue of Queen Victoria in the grounds at the front of Belfast City Hall. While many may be familiar with seeing photographic images of her in her later life, in 1854 a series of portraits was commissioned by her husband, Prince Albert. Aged 35, Queen Victoria had already worn the crown for half her life. Of the image above (p. 19), the Queen noted in her diary that she “was very successfully photographed, but it took a long time”.
Built in Belfast, the RMS Titanic sank on her maiden voyage to New York City, on 14 April 1912. There were 1,316 passengers and nearly 1,000 crew; 705 survived. This image (p. 230) shows newsboy Ned Parfett selling the Evening News outside the London office of the White Star Line shipping company, which was cleared of negligence in two official inquiries. Parfett, as a British soldier, was killed in France in 1918.
The Battle of the Somme was a five-month clash along a 24km front. On the first day, 1 July 1916, the British Army lost nearly 60,000 men. The 36th (Ulster) Division was the only division of the British corps to achieve the objectives of the opening day; it captured a long section of the German front. Shells tore the woods of the Somme Valley to ribbons, which this image shows (p. 254). By the end of this battle, some 600,000 were killed or wounded on the Allied side, including 5,500 from the Ulster Division.
A rebellion for Irish independence also took place in 1916. After the First World War, the Irish Repubican Army found guerilla battles with the British Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, and other auxiliaries. This ended with the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Michael Collins, a key architect of the treaty, took on the military command of the new Irish Free State, which is shown in this image (p. 280). He was assassinated 15 days after this photo was taken.
During the Second World War, Hitler used air assaults, which targeted civilian and industrial locations in London, Hull, Liverpool, and Glasgow. It is remiss of the authors not to cite Belfast, where 1,000 were killed by Blitz raids. This image (p. 359) is a staged photograph, to emphasise the plight of children during the bombing campaign.
We have become familiar with the annual Christmas message delivered by Queen Elizabeth II. This image (p. 410) shows her first Christmas broadcast, by radio on 25 December 1952, from the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. This tradition began by her grandfather George V, in 1932.
In February 1953, violent storms in the North Sea caused flooding in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. During the weekend of 31 January to 1 February, sea levels rose by as much as 5.6m, causing widespread damage. An estimated 30,000 animals were killed by the flooding, which this image depicts (p. 414). More than 2,500 people died, including 133 passengers and crew of the Princess Victoria car ferry, which sank off Northern Ireland in the North Channel. The wreckage lies five miles from the Copeland Islands.
The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a supranational economic treaty created in the aftermath of the Second World War. This 1957 image (p. 418) shows a reception in Luxembourg being addressed by René Mayer, a senior ECSC official. The ECSC was the precursor to the European Economic Community and, in turn, the European Union.
This selection of colourised images from world history shows how local and global events are interdependent -- we affect and are affected by movements of history. This set represents epochs of colonial empire, rebellion, world wars, natural catastrophes, and international cooperation. What images will capture the essence of our future history, say, of man-made disasters and retrenchment?
Originally published at Mr Ulster: http://mrulster.com/2019/05/27/book-r...
August 2, 2022
Este libro es una cosa preciosa.
Cientos de imágenes de 1850 a 1959 colorizadas por una brasileña con un excelente ojo para la historia.
Cada imagen viene acompañada de su descripción que te va situando en el contexto que fue tomada.
Me encantó que aunque si aparecen las icónicas imagenes requisito (La mamá migrante de la gran depresión, o Hitler en su rally de nuremberg), los autores también hicieron un excelente trabajo seleccionando fotos que no se suelen ver ni en blanco y negro.
Las fotos pre-1920 son especialmente fascinantes por que es un mundo que no imaginas a color- la rebelión boxer, el asesinato de Francisco Fernando, la gran exposición de 1860, la construcción de la torre Eiffel. Todas en glorioso color.
Vale la pena leer el libro a detalle y volver a el de vez en cuando - te recuerda que detras de cada historia hay gente verdadera participando en ella.
Cientos de imágenes de 1850 a 1959 colorizadas por una brasileña con un excelente ojo para la historia.
Cada imagen viene acompañada de su descripción que te va situando en el contexto que fue tomada.
Me encantó que aunque si aparecen las icónicas imagenes requisito (La mamá migrante de la gran depresión, o Hitler en su rally de nuremberg), los autores también hicieron un excelente trabajo seleccionando fotos que no se suelen ver ni en blanco y negro.
Las fotos pre-1920 son especialmente fascinantes por que es un mundo que no imaginas a color- la rebelión boxer, el asesinato de Francisco Fernando, la gran exposición de 1860, la construcción de la torre Eiffel. Todas en glorioso color.
Vale la pena leer el libro a detalle y volver a el de vez en cuando - te recuerda que detras de cada historia hay gente verdadera participando en ella.
February 6, 2019
This was fascinating.
Color adds so much life to every photo here, making the subjects depicted accessible and present. With phenomenal work from the colorist Marina Amaral every photo looks amazing, like it’s been freshly-taken. Extensive captions also make for an illuminating read if a pretty heavy one at times (You’re still not sufficiently angry about colonialism? This book will rectify it).
An essential read for any history lover.
Color adds so much life to every photo here, making the subjects depicted accessible and present. With phenomenal work from the colorist Marina Amaral every photo looks amazing, like it’s been freshly-taken. Extensive captions also make for an illuminating read if a pretty heavy one at times (You’re still not sufficiently angry about colonialism? This book will rectify it).
An essential read for any history lover.
March 12, 2019
If you like history, this is a must must have. Marina Amaral is a true artists dedicate to show history in its true form. Her research is almost flawless and the end result is absolutely breathtaking.
November 11, 2019
It's stunning. Adding color to old black and white photos gives them an extra layer of realness. And the descriptions lend a great deal of context. Especially as you get into the 1900s. It's where so much of current trouble started.
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