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3rd out of 568 books
—
841 voters
Salt: A World History (عالم المعرفة #320)
From the Bestselling Author of Cod and The Basque History of the World
In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substanc...more
In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substanc...more
Paperback, 484 pages
Published
January 28th 2003
by Penguin Books
(first published January 1st 2002)
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Well, I'll be pickled!
We say we'll take something with a grain of salt as if it's nothing, but much of the history of the world is tied up in the quest for salt. It's not nothing. We're fortunate to have it in such abundance that we can take it for granted and worry about getting too much of it in our diets. For most of human existence that was not the case.
The material here is thorough and often fascinating, but you must have a strong interest in history if you hope to get through it. Had I t...more
We say we'll take something with a grain of salt as if it's nothing, but much of the history of the world is tied up in the quest for salt. It's not nothing. We're fortunate to have it in such abundance that we can take it for granted and worry about getting too much of it in our diets. For most of human existence that was not the case.
The material here is thorough and often fascinating, but you must have a strong interest in history if you hope to get through it. Had I t...more
Previously read Sept 2003 - Checked this out from the library on the recommendation of Carla Irene
The title is pretty self-explanatory: the book discusses how salt was accessed, processed, sold and used from ancient times through today. I was pleased to see non-European cultures were included - especially since China and India have had such a rich history entwined with this essential mineral. However, I would have liked to see more info about North & South America and sub-Saharan Africa, and...more
The title is pretty self-explanatory: the book discusses how salt was accessed, processed, sold and used from ancient times through today. I was pleased to see non-European cultures were included - especially since China and India have had such a rich history entwined with this essential mineral. However, I would have liked to see more info about North & South America and sub-Saharan Africa, and...more
I very much enjoyed this book on world history, roled like a ball of yarn around the role salt played in this history. I think that different readers will enjoy different aspects of the book. There is something for everyone. I particularly enjoyed the sections on Chinese ancient history, on French salt production on Noirmoutier and Ile de Ré and also the perspective of how French salt taxes (gabelle) influenced the French revolution. This was interesting becuase other books stress the role of th...more
I was very non-plussed by this book. Kurlansky does not do a very good job of presenting his topic. In my opinion he was just throwing out about any facts he could find about salt. In a way he ties it together. He discusses how ancient Chinese used salt; how northern Europeans used salt; how salt was mined; etc. I got that salt is a major natural resource that is the basis for cuisine and culture throughout the world, but I was still asking myself the question, "And?" Kurlansky left me wonderin...more
This was the first so-called "commodity history" that I've read, and I'm sorry to say it might have turned me completely off the damn things. I'm not entirely sure why this book is so popular and so widely read, since it strikes me as simply a series of stories by Mark Kurlansky that quickly settle into the same basic mantra, which is: 1) Here is this culture; 2) Like the twenty other cultures I have just introduced to you, salt was also important to this culture; 3) These are the ways they gath...more
If I'd stopped halfway through this book, I probably would have given it two stars. It's a look into world history, seen through the lens of the salt industry over the years. It wasn't especially gripping in the early going, coming across quite a bit like a freshman-level college history text. The lack of footnotes or endnotes annoyed me as well, as I am one of those weird people who actually uses them, either to confirm accurately portrayed primary source material, or as signposts to further re...more
The history of salt is the history of humanity. Salt is in our very being. The finding, producing, use, transporting, taxing and wars over salt shows the history of man's migrations and civilization in a new and fascinating light. We cannot live without salt...so wherever man is, there is salt.
This is the kind of book I love. History, cookbook, trivia, people and places all around the world, all rolled into a fascinating book about one topic---salt. But that topic touches so much of our lives,...more
This is the kind of book I love. History, cookbook, trivia, people and places all around the world, all rolled into a fascinating book about one topic---salt. But that topic touches so much of our lives,...more
A beautiful exploration into the role this substance has played in the human grand narrative.
The first two thirds were very informative and interesting, but it wasn't until I got to the section about India that I was totally enthralled. The story of how Ghandi used the British imposed salt laws, and his disobedience of them, to gain freedom for his country was truly riveting.
I can't help but draw parallels between this story and other moments in history. It's long been a fact that civic rebell...more
The first two thirds were very informative and interesting, but it wasn't until I got to the section about India that I was totally enthralled. The story of how Ghandi used the British imposed salt laws, and his disobedience of them, to gain freedom for his country was truly riveting.
I can't help but draw parallels between this story and other moments in history. It's long been a fact that civic rebell...more
Mark Kurlansky is a historical writer who does what one reviewer referred to as the “little-big” style of writing, that is to say, he takes something little and often overlooked and from it he spins out larger truths about society and the world. To say that he does this well would be an understatement.
Salt: A World History, his fascinating history of this overlooked cooking seasoning, makes a couple very good points in its introduction. Because of its current cheapness and easy availability, we...more
Salt: A World History, his fascinating history of this overlooked cooking seasoning, makes a couple very good points in its introduction. Because of its current cheapness and easy availability, we...more
Jan 06, 2009
Olivia
marked it as to-read
I have tried to digest this book called Salt, especially as a food reviewer, and a history buff in training, but I think I will throw it over my left shoulder as I can't get past the taste of the endless first chapter on ancient Asian governments.
The book is pretty well written and full of great pictures and interesting salty tid-bits, but maybe its a bit too ambitious to try to tell the history of the world through a pure salt perspective?!
The value of the mineral, and the elaborate way it was...more
The book is pretty well written and full of great pictures and interesting salty tid-bits, but maybe its a bit too ambitious to try to tell the history of the world through a pure salt perspective?!
The value of the mineral, and the elaborate way it was...more
This book was completely fascinating! Sure, human population didn't really take off until we started staying put in one place and domesticating animals and crops, but what do you think preserved those food staples? Salt! Salt didn't just play a role with how we preserve food, but entire wars and civilizations rose and fell due (in part) to their hold on salt. Seriously! Venice became a huge European powerhouse in the middle ages because of their saltworks, and I learned that salt even played a p...more
This book is about so much more than salt. A friend asked me what I was listening oo while listening to this one and they thought it sounded like an absurd thing to read about. I'm inclined to believe that many people might turn away from this book based on that fact, but I found it to be chalked full of so many interesting facts from some of the earliest history.
I found all the information presented in the book a little overwhelming at times and I do believe I would have given it 5 stars had I...more
I found all the information presented in the book a little overwhelming at times and I do believe I would have given it 5 stars had I...more
An interesting survey of the geography and politics of salt. A hodgepodge of random information about how a small but essential substance has indelibly impacted from Israeli tourist development on the Dead Sea to elite fascination with touring underground salt mines to variations in Chinese cuisine and health contingent upon salt availability. Salt: A World History is an example of the kind of historiography I truly enjoy. Rather than trying to discuss an entire country, continent or civilizatio...more
450 pages is a lot of salt. Though interesting by the end I was very ready to be done with it.
A thorough journey into salt, this book was highly informative and entertaining. I was initially drawn to this book for I am a self-proclaimed foodie and salt lover, so to explore the journeys of salt was quite exciting.
A book filled with history and interesting tidbits (i.e. the term salary comes from sal, the Latin word for salt) this book was definitely fun and interesting. I would recommend this book to any who are interested in food and history. A great combination and a fun read!
A book filled with history and interesting tidbits (i.e. the term salary comes from sal, the Latin word for salt) this book was definitely fun and interesting. I would recommend this book to any who are interested in food and history. A great combination and a fun read!
This is one of my favorite books of all time. It spurred me to embrace what has become one favorite subjects: food history. Mark Kurlansky brilliantly navigates most of known history describing how salt was almost always a major influence. You're left feeling like salt is the Forrest Gump of food, having played a little respected but, nevertheless, major role in the development of civilization as we know it. Kurlansky's following book, Cod, has major intersections with Salt but is also very good...more
The history of salt is super interesting, and I learned a lot of amazing facts about human history from reading this book, BUT... the editing was pretty bad. I mean, it has to be pretty bad for you to actually notice that a book is really poorly written. Chapters would end out of nowhere, there were tons of non-sequiturs, etc. It got progressively worse as I got through the book- and then towards the end it became an advertisement for Mortons Salt. I'd recommend this book from a library, but not...more
Sep 11, 2012
Holly Morrow
added it
This is a good 230-page book. Unfortunately, its 449 pages. It tells the story of salt, a commodity so essential and precious (particularly before the days of refrigeration) that communities used to rise or fall based on their ability to produce or procure it. And it is interesting to see the way different places – completely isolated from one another – came around to the same two or three methods of making salt (basically – boiling off salt water, mining rock salt, or scraping it off natural sa...more
Was staying at with friends several years back and was telling them about my recent struggles with insomnia. One of them, a big foodie, handed me this book, saying this'll do ya. So, reading a chapter of Salt every night before bed became part of my bedtime ritual, and I never slept better. Each time I failed to complete a chapter, I'd start it over the next night and try again. It didn't matter because my brain felt like a sieve to the myriad facts about salt passing before my tired eyes. All I...more
This book covered an interesting subject, of salt, humanity, and how important salt has been throughout history. It is interesting of how important salt was to the preservation of food in the age before refrigeration, and the book discusses the role of salt in fermented, pickled, and dried food. Salt has left its mark on the map as well, with important salt regions being named after their critical resources, such as Salzburg (Salt Castle).
It is interesting of how a lot of mining technology was...more
It is interesting of how a lot of mining technology was...more
This is a tremendously interesting work. If the subject -- salt -- seems boring to you, it's probably because we live in a modern era of refrigeration where salt is something that sits on the table next to pepper and we use it to season our food before we eat it.
The thing is, as you delve into this work, you will come to realize that far from being a mere kitchen staple and source of high blood pressure, salt is a chemical of immense importance to human history. There are many reasons, ranging...more
The thing is, as you delve into this work, you will come to realize that far from being a mere kitchen staple and source of high blood pressure, salt is a chemical of immense importance to human history. There are many reasons, ranging...more
In the book Salt: A World History the author Mark Kurlansky is describing the major role which salt has played throughout history. Something that I found very interesting is that salt is the only rock which people actually eat. People used have used salt in great amounts in their meals; the human body needs a certain amount of salt to maintain homeostasis. There are many different ways in which people have used salt. People use it for religion, superstition, trade, preserving food, etc. Also, ba...more
It turns out that salt has been a prized world commodity for most of history. It is the most important electrolyte, it was the primary form of preserving food before refrigeration was invented, a central ingredient in making cheese and other dairy foods, it makes food taste better, it's part of the recipe for gunpowder, etc. The ancient Chinese invented modern drilling techniques by drilling into salt dome formations in places with no access to the sea salt. They are the exact same techniques th...more
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I would highly recommend it for intelligent people looking for a little bit of 'novelty' history in their lives (or people training for Jeopardy).
When you first hear the title of this book, one's first reaction is generally to chuckle because, let's be serious, what is there to the history of salt? It's just a mineral!
Well, Kurlansky tells us that there is a lot to the history of salt and that our lives and history are intricately tied to the location and usag...more
When you first hear the title of this book, one's first reaction is generally to chuckle because, let's be serious, what is there to the history of salt? It's just a mineral!
Well, Kurlansky tells us that there is a lot to the history of salt and that our lives and history are intricately tied to the location and usag...more
'Worth your weight in salt'. This book was a delightful read. I originally bought it for my son for Christmas and picked it up. On page 4 of the introduction, there is an engraving dating from 1157 of a bunch of women holding down a partially disrobed man titled "Women Salting Their Husbands". "With this salting, front and back, At last strong natures they will not lack." OK, I was hooked. (Thankfully, I've been able to avoid being salted myself so far.)
You can open this book on almost any page...more
You can open this book on almost any page...more
"In 1744, Guillaume Francois Rouelle, a member of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, wrote a definition of a salt that has endured. He said that a salt was any substance caused by the reaction of an acid and a base. For a long time, the existence of acids and bases had been known but little understood. Acids were sour tasting and had the ability to dissolve metal. Bases felt soapy. But Rouelle understood that an acid and a base have a natural affinity for each other because nature seeks compl...more
Disclaimer - I had a fever for four of the days that I read this book. Having said that, I found it so completely gripping that I couldn't put it down - who knew that a history of salt could be so utterly fascinating? I was given this book by a work colleague and launched into it without reading the cover, with little idea of what to expect. The first chapter sets the scene:
"Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization u...more
This book started out exciting and became tedious. I loved the early chapters which traced the progress of civilization and how it was tied in with salt production. The Chinese discovered natural gas while salt mining. The Egyptians began preserving food and bodies thanks to salt. The book follows salt production and trade through ascending peoples such as the Celts, Romans, Venetians, the Basques, the Norse, the English. I got a little bored with the chapter on herring, but found the subsequent...more
The history of Sodium, focused primarily on Sodium Chloride (table salt).
How interesting can a book about a mineral be? Well, there was a pretty good book about "Gold" - but "Salt" seems like a distant 2nd place in terms of the drama available for the author to work with.
That said, I did learn a few interesting things. Since the beginning of written history until the 1800's, Salt was the primary means of food storage.
Canning eventually took a lot of market share from salt. The first cans were us...more
How interesting can a book about a mineral be? Well, there was a pretty good book about "Gold" - but "Salt" seems like a distant 2nd place in terms of the drama available for the author to work with.
That said, I did learn a few interesting things. Since the beginning of written history until the 1800's, Salt was the primary means of food storage.
Canning eventually took a lot of market share from salt. The first cans were us...more
For years, I kept hearing about how awesome this book was. Everyone has praised it up and down. So when I finally got around to picking up a copy of it, I was feeling pretty excited. And of course, it turns out to be one of those books that everyone else in the world seems to like but me.
I will admit that there were a lot of chapters of this book that I did enjoy. And I learned many fun facts that I had not previously known: i.e. where the term "red herring" comes from, how soy sauce is made, wh...more
I will admit that there were a lot of chapters of this book that I did enjoy. And I learned many fun facts that I had not previously known: i.e. where the term "red herring" comes from, how soy sauce is made, wh...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodreads Librari...: Not part of a series | 2 | 27 | May 14, 2013 08:15am | |
| Bound Together: Salt discussion | 13 | 65 | Apr 01, 2012 08:14pm |
Mark Kurlansky (born 7 December 1948 in Hartford, Connecticut) is a highly-acclaimed American journalist and writer of general interest non-fiction. He is especially known for titles on eclectic topics, such as cod or salt.
Kurlansky attended Butler University, where he harbored an early interest in theatre and earned a BA in 1970. However, his interest faded and he began to work as a journalist in...more
More about Mark Kurlansky...
Kurlansky attended Butler University, where he harbored an early interest in theatre and earned a BA in 1970. However, his interest faded and he began to work as a journalist in...more
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“In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.”
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“modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt.”
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