Cod: A Biography Of The Fish That Changed The WorldWars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. 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. Cod is a charming tour of history with all its economic forces laid bare and a fish story embellished with great gastronomic detail. It is also a tragic tale of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once the cod's numbers were legendary. In this deceptively whimsical biography of a fish, Mark Kurlansky brings a thousand years of human civilization into captivating focus. |
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LibraryThing Review
Umsögn notanda - DinadansFriend - LibraryThingThis is a brief survey of the management of the Atlantic Cod fishery since the Middle Ages. I'm sure that there will be a revised edition bringing the story forward to 2019 from 1997, when this book ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
Umsögn notanda - EricCostello - LibraryThingI've enjoyed a number of Kurlansky's books, such as his ones on oysters, and on salt; this rather goes with them in some respects. It's an examination of the business of fishing cod, and how it ... Read full review
Efni
Sentry on the Headlands | 1 |
A Few New Ideas Versus Nine | 113 |
Requiem for the Grand Banks | 177 |
The Dangerous Waters of Natures | 191 |
Bracing for the Spanish Armada | 209 |
Bracing for the Canadian Armada | 219 |
A CooKs TALE Szx CENTURIES 01 | 235 |
Bibliography | 277 |
283 | |
289 | |
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