Cod
by Mark Kurlansky · first published 2004
5mentions
3recommended by
5HN commenters
2019–2026first – last mentioned
60% recommend40% neutral
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I highly recommend the book “Cod” by Mark Kurlansky. It’s a very easy read. “Salt” by the same author is also fantastic.
on “A History of Salt Cod (2019)” ↗Mark Kurlansky has done a brisk business in this kind of biography-of-a-thing, Salt, and Cod were the first two books I thought of when I read your post, but he's also got books called Salmon and Paper that I haven't read. I think that I would put those books under the broad heading of social…
on “Ask HN: Biographies of Companies or Things?” ↗That book is by Mark Kurlansky who also discusses the Basques (and Iceland) in great detail in his entertaining book Cod: https://www.amazon.com/Cod-Biography-Fish-Changed-World/dp/0...
on “The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin” ↗Mark Kurlansky (of Cod and Salt fame) wrote a book "The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell" which detailed the history of oysters and NYC [0]. Apparently at one time more than 700 million oysters a year were being harvested.…
on “Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters” ↗…spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefore were free from the animal version of "original sin". That's why so much effort was put into catching and preserving fish. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Cod-Biography-Fish-Changed-World-eboo... Also history of food: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky-ebo... The author has a fascination with Basques & Basque history. Or maybe they…
on “Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food” ↗