White is the color of mourning

In White Is the Color of Mourning , Diana and Michael Preston combine their skills as historians and novelists to tell the extraordinary love story that gave rise to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal.

In 1631, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, devastated by the loss of his beloved, began construction of a monument of incomparable splendor and magnificence in memory of Mumtaz Mahal, the "favorite of the palace." The two shared an extraordinary love story over the course of nineteen years of marriage. They were inseparable—Mumtaz Mahal accompanied Shah Jahan through all adversities, travels, and military campaigns, even while pregnant with his children.

The imperial couple's passion was so intense that it defied the sociocultural expectations of the time, according to which wives over 30, considered too old, were often left out of the harem. This same passion, however, would prove to be the emperor's undoing.

Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to the couple's 14th child, and Shah Jahan, deeply grieving, designed the Taj Mahal—an extravagant and exquisite memorial on the banks of the Jumna River, a brilliant mausoleum of incredible symmetry, built of white marble and studded with countless precious stones. This "Paradise on earth," while reflecting the opulence of the former imperial power, is also a mark of its decline. Construction lasted twenty years and bankrupted the Mughal Empire, pitting brother against brother and son against father in bloody conflicts. Shah Jahan was dethroned and spent the rest of his days as his son's prisoner in the Agra Fort, from where he watched, across the river, the white mausoleum he had built as an expression of love and mourning.

The story behind the Taj Mahal has an air of tragedy and the emotions of a grand opera. Skilled storytellers Diana and Michael Preston reveal in *White Is the Color of Mourning * the human face of one of the Seven Wonders of the World.