Salt: A World History

Rating:
Summary: A salute to salt
Review: Salt is truly ubiquitous, which is why this book is so successful. We cannot live without the stuff, yet is there any other commodity that is more taken for granted? Only modern mining and transportation techniques allow us to overlook the important place that salt plays in our lives. But, as Mark Kurlansky shows us, it was not always so. From before the dawn of civilization to as recently as 100 years ago, the access to a stable supply of salt was of central concern to any community. Cities, cultures, and empires rose and fell due to their ability to secure it.
Coupled with the interesting historical facts is Kurlansky's accessable style, which makes this work of history read almost like a story. And in my opinion, that is the highest form of praise that a history can recieve. 5 stars!


Rating:
Summary: A Little goes a Long Way
Review: "Salt," by Mark Kurlansky, is all you could possibly hope to know about "the only rock human's eat." Though well written, interesting, filled with lore, and entertaining, it's really more than I ever wanted to know. Maybe the secret of "Salt," like salt, is small doses. That's not the route I took, though. I figured I'd devour the text like any other book and finish it off in about a week. I almost did, and then something else beckoned (actually, anything could have beckoned and gained my interest after a week of "Salt,") and I put the book aside with about ten or fifteen pages to go. I haven't gone back to it.

One time I baked a whole chicken in a salt crust. It was an experiment and lots of fun. I mixed salt, flour, and water, to form a dough; flavored the chicken under its skin with tarragon, encased the chicken in the dough and baked it at 250 degrees. After about 45 minutes I took it out of the oven, and the crust had become so hard I had to break it with a hammer. The chicken was extremely pale, moist, and tender; but, man, was it salty! With the tarragon, strangely pleasant, but a little went a long, long way, and I've never gone back to that, either.

Rating:
Summary: A way of viewing history
Review: A long view of culinary history with a few good recipes thrown in. Don't try Garrum, a Roman fish sauce. The section on the Celts leads me to assume that the book is well-researched and accurate. It could benefit from a few more battles and/or plagues, I guess. It does have digressions into pepper and sugar--and a whole history of the birthplace of Tabasco Sauce. Also it's nice to know how soy sauce was invented, and why worcestershire sauce came to be!

Rating:
Summary: Repetitious
Review: A repetious assembly of odd bits, anecdotes and recipes (a lot of recipes), some quite interesting , some not. Repetitious. Occasionally fatuous, occessionally fascinating, always repetitious. He repeats a lot. Says the same thing over and over. Talks about how to evaporate salt from sea water a lot. Repetitious. Very very very repetitous.

Rating:
Summary: Not so hot on chemistry
Review: An interesting volume, but skip the chapter, "The Odium of Sodium." The author, along with his editor and researcher deserve a good salting over the errors in this chapter. I'll list a few examples:
"...gunpowder which was potassium nitrate." Actually, gunpowder contains potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal.
"Epsom salts is now used... ... in explosives." No way.
"...sodium carbonate in the form of baking soda." Sorry, it's sodium bicarbonate.
"...carbonyl chloride... Known as as mustard gas. Wrong again. It's known as phosgene.
And the errors continue. It makes me wonder how many errors exist in the other sections of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Salt as a thread through history
Review: At first glace a book on the topic of Salt would seem mundane and somewhat pedantic. Upon reading, however, you begin to realize the impact that salt in its various forms, its production, and its use in preserving food has had in shaping major historical events. From the colonization of the new world, the rationale for the wealth and success (and fall) of old world cities, and the US civil war, salt has been a major influence on the course of history. It is an interesting lens through which to look at world history.

Rating:
Summary: A Terrible Disappointment
Review: Having read and loved "Cod" by Mr. Kurlansky, I was looking forward to "Salt". Cod was interesting, readable and entertaining as well as being a comprehensive history of an interesting and little known topic. I thought Salt would be the same. Perhaps the best way to sum up the difference between the successful Cod and the tedious Salt is to note that Cod was 294 pages and Salt, 449.

Salt is tedious and redundant. There is no central theme. The author takes us all around the world, salt lick by brine spring to relate how every salt producer produced the salt and then distributed used or distributed it. There were plenty of trees, but Mr. Kurlansky never found the forest. Every chapter was merely a new stop on the tour. The tour was so disorganized that it did not proceed geographically nor by time.

A few hundred pages shorter and this would have been so much better. A few examples of salt production types and an overview would have improived it to be readable and interesting.

There are some pearls such as the Chinese were producing salt with the aid of natural gas while Europeans were virtually still in caves. The Egyptian mummification was also interesting. Unfortunately, these were in the first chapters.

Interestingly, Mr. Kurlansky's history virtually ignores the twentieth century. Very little is included about the 20th and 21st centuries except a few excerpts of salt producing areas that went under and the noting that Morton and Cargill are now the two largest producers. Virtually nothing was included about how they got that way or how salt use and production compares today with 100-200 years ago.

This is a very tough read. I would not recommend it after the first 80-100 pages. With those read, unfortunately, you've got the book.

Rating:
Summary: Salt: A World History
Review: I agree with the review posted Oct. 28 03. Shame! on Penguin for allowing a book like this to be published. Spelling errors, syntactical errors, mystifying use of pronouns, cloudy narrative and stultifying cadence. It's discouraging enough when we hear on TV "The traffic is going good on Route...." but to read similar poor text in a so-called NYT best seller crosses (sadly) a new line. Who edited this? A second grader? Kulansky's "Cod" was excoriated by scholars, wouldn't you think someone would take better care with this new book. Yes, there are interesting anecdotal passages, and salt -- like sugar-- plays a pivotal role in world history, but for heaven's sake give us a WRITER/HISTORIAN/RACONTEUR not a learning-different Matt Drudge with marbles in his mouth.

Rating:
Summary: there is nothing sweet about this book
Review: i am a salt historian and it left a salty taste in my mouth.

Rating:
Summary: Not Worth Its Salt
Review: I found several errors of fact in only a few pages, which makes me wonder how many other errors are to be found in this book. Sadly, I just cannot trust it as a source.