Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World

For almost five millennia, in every culture and in every major
religion, indigo-a blue pigment obtained from the small green leaf of a
parasitic shrub through a complex process that even scientists still
regard as mysterious-has been at the center of turbulent human
encounters.

Indigo is the story of this precious dye and
its ancient heritage: its relationship to slavery as the "hidden half"
of the transatlantic slave trade, its profound influence on fashi…