In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.
14½ hours of facts about salt and salt-adjacent things. Iodized salt. Potassium chloride. Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Campaign. Soy sauce. Catsup. Cheshire. San Francisco Bay. Oil exploration. The Dead Sea. The book never dwells too long, and everything is surprisingly, for me at least, interesting.
Fabulous rundown of the history of salt around the world, covering every continent and culture. This compendium documents every aspect of salt's varied production methods, and diverse uses. Stories recounting salt miners' lives, interspersed with salty recipes from ancient and middling times, made the read particularly fascinating and delectable.
So, I love microhistories. There's just something SO satisfying about learning a lot about the world by ostensibly learning about something small and contained. And Salt is basically the ur-microhistory -- one of the first and most famous books in the genre.
By my typical standards of microhistory, Salt is a win: every conversation I had while reading it eventually came around to me saying something like "so did you know that one of the major advantages of the North in the civil war is that they had more salt mines?" and (since I read it while in Austria) "did you know that they used to open salt mines to the general public as adventure rides?" And I did learn a lot about (broader) history through the infinity stories of "this area used to belong to tribe, but nation came and took it over because it had a good …
So, I love microhistories. There's just something SO satisfying about learning a lot about the world by ostensibly learning about something small and contained. And Salt is basically the ur-microhistory -- one of the first and most famous books in the genre.
By my typical standards of microhistory, Salt is a win: every conversation I had while reading it eventually came around to me saying something like "so did you know that one of the major advantages of the North in the civil war is that they had more salt mines?" and (since I read it while in Austria) "did you know that they used to open salt mines to the general public as adventure rides?" And I did learn a lot about (broader) history through the infinity stories of "this area used to belong to tribe, but nation came and took it over because it had a good access to sea salt" but overall, I found the book boring. Not that the topic was boring, but, well Kurlansky's writing style was not ideal for me...he simply doesn't have any form of linking information. He'll state a sentence but not link it to related concepts in the chapter, or provide any sort of information about why that particular fact is interesting. If background information is needed for context he doesn't provide it. My own textbook writing is filled with linking phrases like "therefore, it follows that..." or "in light of this, it's particularly interesting that..." to keep the reader grounded in how things relate to each other. Also, each chapter contains recipes for no clear reason. Often the recipes use quantities that aren't defined anywhere and Kurlansky won't tell us what he intends the recipe to be an example of?
Kurlansky also perseverates on some topics: like salted fish. I think there were three chapters on salted fish, and yes, this is a microhistory, but there's really a limit of how much I want to know about salted fish.
But the content was excellent and I'm glad I read it. Just, next time, hopefully with any degree of structure
The subject matter was interesting, but the book was terribly disorganized. I listened to the audio version and I wasn't into the reader.
Exactly what the title would lead you to believe; a history of salt and civilization. Did you know that shoreline saltworks produce, not just table salt, but saltpeter, nitrates for meat-curing, and magnesium salts? There's a full-sized cathedral made out of salt in underground caverns below Salzburg. There are underground boating lakes, as well. Saltponds are red from brine shrimp, and flamingos are pink because they live on those shrimp. This book is full of great stuff like that.
