This book has as its subtitle 'A World History', and if that seems
a rather grandiloquent claim, read on! Kurlansky needs no special
pleading to convince even the most sceptical of readers that the
progress of human civilization, from China, Egypt and Rome to today
can be understood in terms of the importance of salt. It has
dominated economics for millenia, wars have been fought over its
control, expeditions have prospected for it, inventors, many
anonymous, have laboured with loving ingenuity to find out how best
to harvest it, entrepreneurs have spent fortunes seeking how to
make most profit from it, lives have been sacrificed to it, it has
occasioned rebellions and brought about lasting social change.
Perhaps its significance was best summed up in the sixth century by
Cassiodorus who said: 'There may be someone who does not seek gold,
but there never yet lived a man who does not desire salt.' Apart
from its savour, it is a substance that the body actually needs,
though how much is one of the mysteries that still remain
unexplained. Kurlansky concentrates on sodium chloride - table
salt, that happy example of yin/yang, when an acid and a base
combine - although he discusses other salts too in passing, and one
of the charms of this book is the succession of alluring recipes.
In some the appeal is purely local or historical: few would enjoy
the Romans' beloved garum or the Chinese delicacy of salted stomach
of frog. All in all there is no end to the fascination of this
book, though I shall not claim that no kitchen should be without
it. Review by Sister Wendy Beckett (Kirkus UK)
Homer called it a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. As Mark Kurlansky so brilliantly relates here, salt has shaped civilisation from the beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of mankind. Wars have been fought over salt and, while salt taxes secured empires across Europe and Asia, they have also inspired revolution - Gandhi's salt march in 1930 began the overthrow of British rule in India.
From the rural Sichuan province where the last home-made soya sauce is made to the Cheshire brine springs that supplied salt around the globe, Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of world history, a multilayered masterpiece that blends political, commercial, scientific, religious and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale.
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