Customer Reviews

Salt: A World History

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The book tells the story of salt throughout world history: how it was made, how it was traded, how it was used, and the effect the salt industry has had on villages, cities, and regions.

The book starts and ends in China, first describing the brine wells and the advanced drilling techniques the Chinese invented centuries ago. The text then moves to how salt was used in Roman times describing a sauce called garum made from pickled and fermented fish parts. Kurlansky then continues with Mediteranean fish industry. Salt's main use was in preserving fish. The next big change came when cod was found off the coast of Newfoundland. Cod's low fat meant more salt was needed.

Eventually, the American colonies developed their own salt and cod industries. Kurlansky describes the importance of salt in the American Civil War, how salt works led to the marketing of Tabasco sauce, how canals were dug through New York state to take salt from the Great Lakes to the coast.

After a quick recounting of how salt was used by Ghandi to spark India's revolution, the book ends back in China and how the salt industry there has moved into the modern age. The old traditional derricks are gone; no one wanted to pay to preserve even the most important ones as historical landmarks.

Kurlanski gives a good outline of how salt was taxed in various parts of the world. His description of how the salt tax was an important factor in both the French and Indian revolutions deserves special mention.

As he describes how salt was traded and produced, Kurlanky peppers his narrative (sorry...) with short recipes that illustrate how salt was used in different parts of the world and at different times of our history.

If you love food and history, you'll love this book. If you love one and only moderately like the other, you'll find the book bogs down a bit.

After hearing an interview on the radio with the author, I was interested in the apparent parellel between "the salt wars" and the arguments being used today for the uncontrolled development of oil. I find it of some interest that the reasoning of the "power & money" boys haven't changed in 400 years. I'm looking for a new script for them.
Dee

No doubt packed with fascinating facts and trivia about salt, it is a tedious slog to read. The tale is not told in an engaging way, and it just gets bogged down in endless details that do not add up to an interesting whole. I ended up not finishing the book. I don't often do that.

It took me awhile to pick up this book. I had read about it, had seen it profiled in bookstores, and heard some water cooler talk about it. Too bad I waited so long. Kurlansky has a tremendous style which is more of a narrative - informative and interesting - nowhere near an academic lecture. Basically this is a world history through the lens of salt...and it works. Salt has influenced religion, trade, foreign policy, war, culture, diet and family. I will never look at a salt shaker the same way again.

Why was the Erie Canal built? Doesn't all salt come from Siberian salt mines? Why is salt so important that Rome paid its soldiers in salt...hence, "salary"! Wow! Never thought about these things before. We tend to take so many things for granted these days. But trust me! A whole new perspective on history world-wide. And a whole new respect for salt - why it was so important to mankind in order to preserve food for the winter months. It is a life-and-death necessity, in many ways. (By the way, the canal was built to carry salt cheaply to New York City from Detroit, where an enormous salt mine tunnels under Lake Erie. Did YOU know that?) Mark Kurlansky rubs your nose in salt, and you come out so much more knowledgeable, and really have fun learning.

I must add that you will get a much greater kick out of this book if you have some basic knowledge of world history. The fun and charm of the book lies in the wildly different interpretations of world events than the ones taught in schools.

Mr. Kurlansky had a great idea to wrap a world history around the discovery, usage and evolution of salt. There are many fascinating tales around this substance, but unfortunately you can't get away from the fact that you can only read the word "salt" so many times in one sentence or paragraph before you begin to yawn.

This, I think, leads to a certain desparation by the writer in attempting to find something - anything - to amuse the reader. One great example is a sentence containing the word "tintinabulation" which, if looked at carefully, is totally meaningless and serves only for the author to exercise his ego in being able to say that he used the word in a published sentence.

Another problem is the easy way that Mr. Kurlansky throws untruths into his story to back up some odd facts .. for example, he says that French is a language that "does not use apostrophes" during a store-naming story. Considering that the apostrophe is liberally used in French (c'est la vie!) these kinds of assertions cast doubt on the rest of the "facts" presented.

I felt the book was a way for Mr. Kurlansky to attempt to impress us with his perceived worldliness and culinary expertise - to the extent that the book wraps up with a recipe for butter cookies.

Sorry, don't bother, ego gets in the way of what may have been a good story.

The idea of how salt influenced world history sounded like an intriguing read when I first chose this book. However, I was quite disappointed because the book turned out to be mostly about the History of Salt. Your time can be better spent elsewhere considering that the book is also 400+ pages.

I agree with the review posted Oct. 28 03. Shame! on Penguin for allowing a book like this to be published. Spelling errors, syntactical errors, mystifying use of pronouns, cloudy narrative and stultifying cadence. It's discouraging enough when we hear on TV "The traffic is going good on Route...." but to read similar poor text in a so-called NYT best seller crosses (sadly) a new line. Who edited this? A second grader? Kulansky's "Cod" was excoriated by scholars, wouldn't you think someone would take better care with this new book. Yes, there are interesting anecdotal passages, and salt -- like sugar-- plays a pivotal role in world history, but for heaven's sake give us a WRITER/HISTORIAN/RACONTEUR not a learning-different Matt Drudge with marbles in his mouth.

I have come to believe that you DO learn something with every new book. In this case, it is the extreme importance of salt as an empire-creating, nation-building, source of survival and yes, luxury. It is hard to imagine a world without salt. Indeed, the reason salt is rarely discussed in history books today is due to its ubiquity. If gold were as common as salt, it too would become a subject of relative unimportance.

Essentially, this is a presentation of salt from several angles, mostly historical. There is some science and health for the interested layman, some helpful illustrations and charts. Also the several old recipes are interesting in what they say and what they omit. It is the history that I found fascinating, the rise and fall of companies and empires based on this single commodity. A good, easy read.

I gave up on it after reading for a while, and then skimming. I was a bit put off when I read that salt is the only rock we eat. Not true: we eat clay in candy, muscovite in candy, ground up quartzite in various products, and so on. The book seems better suited to those interested in cooking. The science, on the other hand, was too elementary for me. The importance of Salt in political history sounded overrated to me.