Salt: A World History
Penguin (Non-Classics) - Penguin (Non-Classics)
Release date: 2003-01-28
Paperback
Author: Mark Kurlansky
Economic Geology, Mineralogy (Specific Aspects), Science, History - General History, Science/Mathematics, Rocks & Minerals, World - General, Cooking / History, History / Civilization, Science / Mineralogy, Earth Sciences - Geology, History, Salt, Salt industry and trade
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Salt: A World History
Date undefined"Salt: A World History" is exactly what the title advertises: stories about the production, trade, and use of salt from our earliest archaeological and written records through to modern times.
Kurlansky's writing is serviceable at best and more often rather clunky,repetitious, and tin-eared -- no one will ever accuse him of being a great prose stylist or a master storyteller. He doesn't have the most developed historical sense, which means that bits of information float in discreet units, bereft of context or full interpretation. And he has a *thing* about the Basques, which I have noticed turning up in his other work as well -- I think he tends to insert information he knows well (such as Basque history) into historical moments he's less sure of, so as to sound more knowledgeable than he perhaps truly is.
Nevertheless, the stories Kurlansky has to tell are fascinating enough to mostly overcome those difficulties. As a bonus, each chapter can more or less stand on its own, so you can space your reading in bite-sized chunks, as it were -- "Salt" is a great book to bring to a waiting room or on a bus ride.
In summary, "Salt" is an interesting book, but with too many flaws for me to recommend buying it. Borrow a copy from the library instead.
Salt: A World History
Date undefinedThis book took an item we take for granted today, salt, and discussed its history. Some have criticized the author for including so many recipes. I disagree. Salt is used in cooking after all, and to put salt into a proper context we need to witness how it was used.
I enjoyed how the author wove the various aspects of the salt trade into a coherent history. For instance, that salt was so important in wartime never struck me before, though it seems obvious now.
A good, hard to put down read, Salt: A World History is a good book for people who like history, economics or the culinary arts.
Salt: A World History
Date undefinedMan, this didn't work at all for me. Here's why:
- It zipped past the ancient history (which is what I like) and spent most of its time on European and (white) American history (which I usually already know and don't care about anyway).
- You know how in college you would find some weird tangent to write your paper on so it would seem somewhat original? This book feels like a whole bunch of those essays. I get it, salt was important, but it still feels forced sometimes.
- After a while, you start to get that dreaded "I'm reading history" feeling, where it all starts to look like a list of names and dates. It's totally possible to write history without writing lists; I just don't think this book pulled it off.
Here's the impression I came away from this book with: "15th-century Germans really liked salt. Here's how they made it. You know who else liked salt? 16th-century French people. Here's a recipe that uses salt. Guess who else liked salt?" Ad infinitum.
Meh.
