n   Salt: A World History n by Mark Kurlansky is an enthralling work. Immaculately researched and presented in a coherent and understandable way, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was shocked most of the time by how much of a major role salt has played in both modern and ancient human history. Both in a militarist and economic sense, salt has in many ways been the fuel for human advancement. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for an incredibly engaging non-fiction read. Five stars.

“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”

What kind of book is Salt: A World History? It’s a history book. It’s also an economics, political, and even somewhat of a cook book. Salt is an indispensable ingredient and contains sodium, an important nutrient for our bodies. The fact that humans generally enjoy a salty taste is probably an evolutionary indicator of our bodies’ dependence on it.

From the ancient Chinese and Egyptians to the contemporary Morton Salt company, Mark Kurlansky paints a broad picture of this edible rock. The ways to harvest it, the chemical composition and properties of it, and its role in inciting war and then determining the outcome of the war. For example, Gandhi scraped salt off the coast of the Arabian Sea; this was illegal and against the British salt law, and across India everyone followed suit. Following Gandhi’s arrest, England could not handle the outrage, and India gained its independence.

A really fun read, full of both historical tidbits and significant historical events.

A quick whirlwind of world history based on salt. I had no idea how salt and salt production had a impact on governments and peoples. This book is filled with many interesting bits of history, and was very enjoyable to read. Some parts of the world are covered more in-depth than others, but well done.

An interesting story of Salt through the ages but a bit repetitive at times.
There are sections of this book that are fascinating (5-star) and other sections that are long, tedious and dull (1-star). I'm settling on "I liked it" (3-star) for the overall book.

It's a bit scattered in it's formatting. There is salt through the ages, salt through cultures, salt through countries. A lot of the information is overlapping and repeated. It may have been an idea to have a chapter on the similar aspects of salt through the ages before going through the ages and then not repeating information in each age. If that makes sense.
Same goes with salting fish. Whether it's cod, anchovies, herring or any other fish, the salting process is the same. We don't need to hear it for every fish variety.

That put aside, though, this book is chock full of interesting information on salt, salt mining, recipes (these are quite entertaining), politics, salt usage and salt adages. It's a fascinating subject and I did enjoy the entire book. It's not the story or the information that takes away from this book, it's the way it's put together.


Page 339: The Great Hedge of India is mentioned. An interesting, travelogue book on this hedge is The Great Hedge of India: The Search for the Living Barrier that Divided a People. I recommend this book.

While I do think that the stories could've been better tied together, the book presented salt in a new way for me. Plus, the old-school recipes were really interesting, if a little gross.

I love salt. I need salt. Maybe not this much information about salt, but it's interesting stuff. Maybe at some point I'll go back and finish the book. I did learn a lot--and probably forgot most. I'll go back and read it again sometime.

Chris Lavers started his review of this book for the Guardian with speculation on how an author can get released from publisher’s contract. The publisher receives priority by including a “first refusal” clause on a second book. You merely present your publisher with stunningly unappealing material. If they choose not to publish, then you are free to go elsewhere. A history of salt should work.

Mostly, a foodie history with emphasis on the historical importance of salt for food preservation. There is some discussion of industrial uses like embalming in Egypt and other parts of Africa. The sections about cod and Basque fishing were familiar from reading  Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World and  The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation.

Until the first invention by a Paris cook, Nicolas Appert, the “Father of Canning,” most food preservation was salt. The Vitamin C in sauerkraut made it possible for early sailors to avoid scurvy.


Appert canning jar

More sophisticated canning of fish and vegetables followed. Cold preservation and Clarence Birdseye, founder of the frozen food industry were not far behind. In 1928 Birdseye found a buyer for his company and fast freezing method, it became General Foods. But, until these relatively recent events, salt was a vital part of the economy. There were salt laws, salt taxes, and salt merchants.

I learned a lot about the magical properties of salt, well the beliefs and customs in its magic. Salt protects against the evil eye according to both Jews and Muslims. Remember rubbing the newborn infants with salt from the Book of Ezekial 16:4. Sprinkle salt on the stage in traditional Japanese theater to protect against evil. Anglo-Saxon farmers used salt on the plow when invoking the earth goddess for a good harvest. Romans called a man in love salax, in a salted state, the origin of the word salacious.

In the Pyrenees, bridal couples went to church with salt in their left pockets to guard against impotence. In some parts of France, only the groom carried salt, in others only the bride. In Germany, the bride’s shoes were sprinkled with salt.

An 1157 Paris engraving titled Women Salting Their Husbands demonstrated how to make your man more virile. The last line of an accompanying poem reads, “With salting, front and back, At last strong natures they will not lack.” Bibliothèque Nationale

From early history the West African silent barter reported by Herodotus and the ancient salt well of Shaanxi and Sichuan to the 1901 salt dome drilling of Spindletop which redefined the terms drill rig and well to mean oil, not salt. It's all here not too briny, just savory sample.


A crowd gathers to watch a side gusher on Spindletop hill in Beaumont, Texas which was the site of the first Texas oil gusher, 10 January 1901. (Photo by the Texas Energy Museum/Newsmakers) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDQef7UVw...

Spindletop by 1902

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...

wow considering this was a book about salt, it sure was bland as HECK! i highly considered abandoning it multiple times. i enjoy history, food, and science, but seriously still SO boring

For years, I kept hearing about how awesome this book was. Everyone has praised it up and down. So when I finally got around to picking up a copy of it, I was feeling pretty excited. And of course, it turns out to be one of those books that everyone else in the world seems to like but me.

I will admit that there were a lot of chapters of this book that I did enjoy. And I learned many fun facts that I had not previously known: i.e. where the term "red herring" comes from, how soy sauce is made, where Tabasco sauce comes from, etc. Also, I did enjoy the author's clever trick of including many old-timey "salt" recipes. Not that I'll ever attempt to make any of these recipes, but I bet that the food connoisseurs who read this book will.

However, I felt that, around 200 or so pages into this book, it devolved into an awful lot of "and they made salted fish" and/or "and they taxed salt." Zzzzzzzz. I read a lot of non-fiction. I have a high tolerance for seemingly tedious detail. But seriously, how much detailed explanation of the taxation of salt in 18th century France is one person supposed to endure before falling into a coma?

Also, I realize that the author was pushing a very specific agenda here, but if he's to be believed, nearly every major conflict in the history of the world started out as a salt dispute. I find that very hard to swallow. No pun intended.

I guess I'll go back to reading my more obscure non-fiction books and leave the bestsellers for the masses.

I hate to give this a 3/5 I really do. I cannot tell you how many times I picked up and put down this book in stores across the nation.... maybe that should have been my sign.

Don't boo me, but this was dry. There were sections that were legitimately interesting, but there were sections that just needed more editing, they needed to be trimmed down. Also, I dont know how I would personally fix this, but the layout of the book seemed to need changed. It was largely geographically based, so then large sections felt very redundant, afterall there is not so much difference between salting anchovies, or cod, or herring. Perhaps if the sections had been: preservation, tax, wars.... then we could have saved some of the parts that seemed to be rehashed.

Still, I learned a good deal of fascinating information, but I also often found myself too hungry to be rapt and craving salty, tasty foods.

Whew! Salt. Almost 500 pages of salt. This one took me a bit to get through. I did learn a lot. However, more than once I glazed over and found myself thinking about things other than salt. Like how thirsty I was. Or do we have potato chips in the house? Oh, maybe we have tequila and lime! And so on down the rabbit hole. It turns out that salt taxation details, mining methods, and in depth brining and curing techniques throughout history aren't as riveting as one would think. I do wish there was more of a narrative or something tying the salty bits together. It read more like a list of unconnected facts in a text book to this ADHD girl.

Throughout history, the common household mineral, salt, was obtained for usages from food to religious beliefs to archeological discoveries. Within Mark Kurlansky’s book, Salt: A World of History, he provides specific present and past examples of how salt shaped the course of civilizations. In each chapter, Kurlansky focuses on a certain area where salt was excavated, processed, and how it was used. To specify relatable instances, he writes in recipes from ancient cookbooks and chiefs. Even though salt was mainly used for food, Kurlansky provides examples of how salt influenced religious beliefs and patriarchy in certain societies. To show evidence that salt is still a major factor in present day societies, he also writes about archeological discoveries, which were made possible from the preservation of salt. In addition, he writes about the current state of the Dead Sea and the how the company Morton Salt came to be. Even though Mark Kurlansky supplies the reader with specific and interesting evidence of salt, the book seems as if it would never end. Chapters seemed to continue on and recipes seem to be “cooking up” every five pages. The way that Kurlansky writes, he brings the civilizations alive, and with each chapter they evolve within the book. One example is women. He starts of with the women having a little influence in the preservation of salt, but as the book goes on they are the ones preserving. The same goes with the civilizations obtaining the salt. Each society starts off with workers scraping away the salt, however, by the end of the book, there are salt works with hundreds of workers. By the end of the book, the reader has learned about how salt has become a leading mineral in the world and every way possible it can be retrieved. Kurlansky makes sure that the reader knows the whole history of salt, which the title of the book implies. As a whole, Mark Kurlansky tells a non-fiction story of how salt changed the world, but it could have been done in less than for hundred and forty-nine pages.
Even though salt’s importance seems to resemble the size of it’s gains, it has played a major role in the course of man. In Salt: A World of History, Mark Kurlansky tells how salt started as just ingredient to make brines, and later turned into a leading product of the world. Within in his book, Kurlansky tells how salt effect civilization such as the Byzantine Empire, Rome, and Ancient Chinese Dynasties. In each of these civilizations, salt was a key factor that allowed the empires to rise to their potential. Besides the civilizations, it also affected the people within them. Both men and women worked with salt, and it was main element in their daily lives. While Kurlansky mainly focused on past influences of salt, he found a way to tie it together with present day. In daily household, there is usually a container of salt to be found, which is produced by Morton. Kurlansky provides the history about this company, so the reader can relate it to their daily life. While the history of salt, seems long and unimportant, some of it needs to be noticed. The Dead Sea, being one of the most unique bodies of water on Earth, is slowly disappearing. This is because of the constant problem of pollution. By reading Kurlansky’s book, the reader can feel his passion for the mineral. Other writers sometimes have trouble bringing their non-fiction book alive with their emotions, but he didn’t have that problem. After reading his book, the reader may be inspired to read many of his other. Although the information in Mark Kurlansky’s book seems to have a little importance in the reader’s daily life, if he or she looks past it all, it’s a non-fiction book that can change his or her life.