2021, Book 7: Color: a natural history of the palette, Victoria Finlay

It's all right. Travel book and popular history, and somewhat sketchy on some of the history. (E.g., Newton did not put forward the theory that light of different colours is of different wavelengths. He was entirely opposed to the wave theory of light.)

Amusing description of getting a visa to visit Afghanistan to see the lapis lazuli mines:

When the call came we were at dinner. "The Taliban have given me your visa number," Eric said down the crackly satellite line from Kabul. We reached for a pen. "The number is five," he announced grandly. It seemed ironic to have waited so long for a number we could so easily have invented.