Salt : A World History - Softcover

Kurlansky, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099281996 ISBN 13: 9780099281993

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2003

Synopsis

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 civilization from the beginning, and its story is a glittering often surprising part of the history of mankind. So valuable that it has often served as currency and still does in places today, salt inspired the earliest trade routes across unknown oceans and the remotest deserts. 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.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This definitive audiobook about salt will take you through the history and importance of salt as not only our only edible rock, but as a currency, a necessary mineral, a preservative, a curative, and a huge part of our vocabulary. Salt has had an important part in our history and this audiobook is an amusing and informative narrative. Mark Kurlansky traveled the world to study salt and its critical importance to civilization. This fun read is enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable at the same time.

From the Back Cover:

"Kurlansky continues to prove himself remarkably adept at taking a most unlikely candidate and telling its tale with epic grandeur. Salt: A World History reveals all the hidden drama of its seemingly pedestrian subject…. an immensely entertaining read.” -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Stylishly written and wonderfully learned … William Blake famously suggested that the world was to be seen in a grain of sand; Kurlansky has seen it in a grain of salt.” -- The Observer

"Mark Kurlansky’s almost 500-page opus on earth’s only edible rock is the stuff of which epics are born…." -- Zsuzsi Gartner, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, January 26, 2002

"In Salt, Mark Kurlansky, who charmed readers with an entertaining volume on the codfish, turns to a chemical that is essential to human life….darned interesting…. Kurlansky gives us entertainment…. At its best, this is a "wow!" book: roving, startling, engaging." -- Sidney W. Mintz, The Washington Post, Sunday, January 27, 2002

“Only Mark Kurlansky, winner of the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing for Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World , could woo readers toward such an off-beat topic of Salt: A World History...Throughout his engaging, well-researched history, Kurlansky sprinkles witty asides and amusing anecdotes. A piquant blend of the historic, political, commercial, scientific and culinary, the book is sure to entertain as well as educate.” -- PW Daily, Friday, Nov. 16


From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0099281996
• ISBN 13: 9780099281993
• Binding: Paperback