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 used on Sir John Franklin's 1845 Arctic expedition, but the cans were sealed with lead, thus the team suffered lead poisoning. The British Army became the first, large, long term customer of canned food. The "can opener" was invented 50 years later, after cans were made of thinner sheets of metal.

Ice has been used to preserve foot since prehistoric times, but by the mid-20th century, refrigeration had completely eliminated the need for "salting" as a preservative. The General Foods company was created to take advantage of the then upcoming trend of "refrigeration". The name was designed to be like that of "General Motors" and "General Electric".

Most salt comes from sea water, or rock salt from underground, ancient dry oceans. Oil can't pass through salt, so the edges of "Salt Domes" (underground salt deposits) are often filled with oil.

The first underground drilling (percussion drilling) was done in China, in 1100 BC - this drilling was done to find salt. This method wasn't improved on until the 1800's.

Salt was of very high value to the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Chinese and other peoples of antiquity. At the African market of Timbuktu, slaves were typically exchanged for salt.