Kurlansky's Tasty History

The Big Oyster: history on the half-shell by Mark Kurlansky
New York : Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007, c2006.
xx, 307 p. : ill., maps ; 21 cm. 

What a fun way to learn about the history of New York City!  Kurlansky again finds a way to entertain and inform while presenting his discoveries about another item that humans put in their mouths.  He has tackled salt, and cod (which I reviewed here about a year ago).

Like his other books, this one is well-written, fascinating, and very informative.  In it you'll learn that for many years in the 1800s, New York City was the oyster capital of the world - but that in a short time ballooning population and industrialization led to the demise of the rich oyster beds of the New York harbor - due to pollution and and over-harvesting. Kurlansky does a great

There is a lot to The Big Oyster - it is a practical history of the early years of New York City, with a lot about the earliest European settlement of the area to the bustle of the 19th and 20th centuries.  But it is also a social history and a foodways history - including recipes from various eras.  Finally, it is both an environmental history and cautionary tale about the squandering of precious natural resources.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone curious about the history and culture of America's most dynamic city, New York.

Gone Fishing

Cod: a Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky
New York : Penguin Books, 1998, c1997.
viii, 294 p. : ill., maps ; 19 cm.

Our library owns several books by Mark Kurlansky, and the last one I read by him was Salt: a World History - which was a great read. The great talent of Kurlansky is to chose a subject that at first glance might seem rather mundane (if not downright boring) and to reveal how it is a topic of great historical and cultural significance.  While he's doing this he spices (salts!) his narrative with fascinating facts, anecdotes, and asides. I recall finding Salt so fascinating for how humans around the world have developed cultural tastes for extremely fermented (some might say rotten) foods - such as the Roman favorite - garum - a sauce made from fish scraps and remains fermented for months in salt.

Cod doesn't disappoint either.  Whether Kurlansky is making the connections of how the colonial/early American New England economy was powered by the trade of plentiful/low-grade cod to the Caribbean (to feed the slaves being worked in the hellish sugar cane plantations) or explaining the connections between overfished cod stocks and international law of sea treaties, he manages to do it in a concise, interesting and clear way.

I would definitely recommend Cod (the book) to a student interested in US history, environmental studies, wildlife studies, or off-beat, non-fiction reads.