This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
So much of our human body is made up of salt that we'd be dead without it. The fine balance of nature, the trade of salt as currency of many nations and empires, the theme of a popular Shakespearean play... Salt is bestselling author Mark Kurlansky's story of the only rock we eat. From its single origin, to the other discoveries made because of it, fascinating tales of salt and the people who have been involved with it through the age are interwoven here. Fifteen recipes are included that will meet with every taste. Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of history, a multi-layered masterpiece that blends economic, scientific, political, religious and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale. "Kurlansky continues to prove himself remarkably adept at taking a most unlikely candidate and telling its tale with epic grandeur... With Salt, Kurlansky adds his name to this list, rising splendidly to the challenge of showings us the world that can be found in a mere grain of salt".
I read this book many years ago but as I received it as a gift from my younger child, it was time to read it again. Despite the seasoning of decades it holds up as a good book. Salt, which the author notes is "the only rock we eat," plays a vital role in human history and culture. At times this book reads like someone who knows a lot about salt and has decided to tell you all about it in detail, but in the most fascinating way possible. For foodies, Kurlansky also includes recipes using salt from across time and cultures.
There's way too much to summarize here, but my favorite part involves Avery Island in Lousiana. The island is actually a salt dome, and there's a curious connection between salt domes and petroleum. In the case of Avery Island, people have not only exploited it for salt and oil, but Edmund McIlhenny decided it would be a good place to grow peppers for use in his product, Tabasco sauce. The fun stories and historical connections make this book an informative and entertaining read. ( )
I definitely have mixed feelings about this one. The author has done an incredible amount of research and without a doubt makes his case for the importance of salt in world history, connecting it to lots of things we may have never thought of, and throwing in lots of interesting historical anecdotes. However, I could have done without the recipes. I did learn a lot however. The audiobook was generally well read except that the narrator doesn't know how to pronounce a lot of Chinese words, which I guess doesn't matter to most listeners who don't know how they are pronounced to begin with. ( )
ok, I probably found enough of it interesting for 200 pages, rather than the nearly 400 it is, but it was far more interesting then the topic would lead you to believe. ( )
Enjoyed it, a lot of tying history together and the start of bigger things - taxation, money, trade etc.. Easy to drop and pick up easily. Lots of recipes. ( )
Absolutely gorgeous and thought provoking book about humanity's relationship with the only rock we eat. From the very first handful of paragraphs, it's obvious the author has a keen interest in the subject, and a sharp sense of humour. Every chapter is mind blowing. Ancient and far reaching, the story of this ubiquitous compound that has changed lives around the dinner table and altered the path of empires is truly enlightening. Highly recommend it. ( )
Who would have thought that musings on an edible rock could run to 450 breathless pages?
Let me hasten to add that Salt turns out to be far from boring. With infectious enthusiasm, Kurlansky leads the reader on a 5,000-year sodium chloride odyssey through China, India, Egypt, Japan, Morocco, Israel, Africa, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, England, Scandinavia, France and the US, highlighting the multifarious ways in which this unassuming chemical compound has profoundly influenced people's lives.
The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.
—Karl Marx, speech, 1856
Dreams are not so different from deeds as some may think. All the deeds of men are only dreams at first. And in the end, their deeds dissolve into dreams.
—Theodore Herzel, Old New Land, 1902
A country is never as poor as when it seems filled with riches.
—Laozi quoted in the Yan tie lun, A Discourse on Salt and Iron, 81 B.C.
At the time when Pope Pius VII had to leave Rome, which had been conquered by revolutionary French, the committee of the Chamber of Commerce in London was considering the herring fishery. One member of the committee observed that, since the Pope had been forced to leave Rome, Italy was probably going to become a Prtestant country. "Heaven help us," cried another member. "What," responded the first, "would you be upset to see the number of good Protestants increase?" "No," the other answered," it isn't that, but suppose there are no more Catholics, what shall we do with our herring?"
—Alexander Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873
It is an old remark, that all arts and sciences have a mutual dependence upon each other. . . . thus mean, very different in genius and pursuits, become mutually subservient to each other; and a very useful kind of commerce is established by which the old arts are improved, and new ones daily invented.
—William Brownrigg, The Art of Making Common Salt, London, 1748
Dedication
To my parents, Roslyn Solomon and Philip Mendel Kurlansky, who taught me to love books and music
and
to Talia Feiga, who opened worlds while she slept in the crook of my arm.
First words
Introduction
I bought the rock in Spanish Catalonia, in the rundown hillside mining town of Cardonia.
Chapter One A Mandate of Salt
Once I stood on the bank of a rice paddy in rural Sichuan Province, and a lean and aging Chinese peasant, wearing a faded forty-year-old blue jacked issued by the Mao government in the early years of the Revolution, stood knee deep in water and apropos of absolutely nothing shouted defiantly at me, "We Chinese invented many things!"
Quotations
Last words
Fixing the true value of salt, one of earth's most accessible commodities, has never been easy.
So much of our human body is made up of salt that we'd be dead without it. The fine balance of nature, the trade of salt as currency of many nations and empires, the theme of a popular Shakespearean play... Salt is bestselling author Mark Kurlansky's story of the only rock we eat. From its single origin, to the other discoveries made because of it, fascinating tales of salt and the people who have been involved with it through the age are interwoven here. Fifteen recipes are included that will meet with every taste. Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of history, a multi-layered masterpiece that blends economic, scientific, political, religious and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale. "Kurlansky continues to prove himself remarkably adept at taking a most unlikely candidate and telling its tale with epic grandeur... With Salt, Kurlansky adds his name to this list, rising splendidly to the challenge of showings us the world that can be found in a mere grain of salt".
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
(3.72)
Wikipedia in English (13)
2
There's way too much to summarize here, but my favorite part involves Avery Island in Lousiana. The island is actually a salt dome, and there's a curious connection between salt domes and petroleum. In the case of Avery Island, people have not only exploited it for salt and oil, but Edmund McIlhenny decided it would be a good place to grow peppers for use in his product, Tabasco sauce. The fun stories and historical connections make this book an informative and entertaining read. (