Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World - Softcover

Mark Kurlansky

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140275010 ISBN 13: 9780140275018

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1998

Synopsis

An unexpected, energetic look at world history on sea and land from the bestselling author of Salt and The Basque History of the World

Cod, Mark Kurlansky’s third work of nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James Beard Award, is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod, frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. As we make our way through the centuries of cod history, we also find a delicious legacy of recipes, and the tragic story of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once their numbers were legendary. In this lovely, thoughtful history, Mark Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that changed the world forever changed by the world's folly?

“Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish.” –David McCullough, author of The Wright Brothers and 1776

About this title

Review

You probably enjoy eating codfish, but reading about them? Mark Kurlansky has written a fabulous book--well worth your time--about a fish that probably has mattered more in human history than any other. The cod helped inspire the discovery and exploration of North America. It had a profound impact upon the economic development of New England and eastern Canada from the earliest times. Today, however, overfishing is a constant threat. Kurlansky sprinkles his well-written and occasionally humorous history with interesting asides on the possible origin of the word codpiece and dozens of fish recipes. Sometimes a book on an offbeat or neglected subject really makes the grade. This is one of them.

From the Back Cover

"Books as beautifully written and elegantly illustrated as this are, unhappily, as rare as cod. Kurlansky's marvellous fish opus stands as a reminder of what good non-fiction used to be: eloquent, learned, and full of earthy narratives that delight and appall. This book yields a feast of common and uncommon truths about the greatest of all hunters, homo sapiens."-The Globe and Mail

"[A] marvellously enlightening ... concise biography that does justice to the vibrant and tragic history of the cod." -St. John's Evening Telegram

"Stephen King would be proud. In Cod, Mark Kurlansky has created a little book of horrors that is compulsively readable." -The Georgia Straight

"This remarkable and informative volume should net any number of happy readers." -Publishers Weekly

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0140275010
• ISBN 13: 9780140275018
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 294