Gina Barreca at Psychology Today:
Yet perhaps one of the greatest compliments I can give “On Color” is that despite the indisputable scholarly erudition found on every page, the clever edge to its witty prose and its own defiantly unclassifiable nature, it’s a book about aesthetics, literature, language, art, physics, optics, race, class and technology—it remains an enthralling read.
You could, if you wanted, look up more detail about every reference you might not have caught the first time around. (I didn’t know much about the Latin origins of the word “black,” for example, and my knowledge of Newton has always been sketchy at best). But one of the joys of “On Color” is you don’t have to grasp every detail immediately to embrace the central points: Like a great lecture, the significance of its arguments depend on the fluid exuberance and evident authority of its expert guides.
more here.