Much of the charm of this sort of monograph lies in judicious wandering off the main topic and back... and in that regard I have to admit I found Kurlansky rather heavy-handed. He's grimly focused on a single storyline: New York City was built on top of shit-tons of oysters, but a classic tragedy of the commons has left the Big Oyster with nary a namesake to call its own. For light relief, he reprints numerous old oyster recipes -- and you know, there aren't THAT many fundamentally different ways to cook oysters. Bounty, recipe, overharvesting, recipe, pollution, recipe, culminating in oystergeddon... that's pretty much your outline right there.

It's a shame because there are so many obviously alluring narrative loops that could have adorned this topic. Just some things I wondered as I was reading:

* Turns out that the European oyster of art and literature (Ostrea edulis) and the American/Asian oyster (Crassostrea) are not just different species but different genera. How, why, ker-what? Did they have a recent common ancestor that went extinct, or did they somehow evolve separately? The Atlantic is so much smaller than the Pacific... why does the genus line split there? Lay some science on us, yo!

* For many centuries, oysters and fowl were considered a supernal culinary pairing... but it's a taste that seems to have died out except in certain Thanksgiving stuffing recipes. How does a foodway go from the top of the heap to oblivion so quickly?

* Why DO different oysters taste so different? Is the taste more affected by variety, or by whatever the piscine version of "terroir" is?

* What would it even mean to have a "natural" oyster bed when apparently humans have been oyster farming in all the major areas for over a century, and have consequently imported foreign species all over the world?

* Is oysters rockefeller the definitive New York oyster dish? If so, how come it makes no appearance here?

The best and most relaxed parts of this book are the sections on oyster harvesting and cultivation. The worst and tensest parts are when Kurlansky gets on some kind of weirdly moralistic "oysters up, cities down" high horse.

My dad loves oysters so I had to read it.

Amazing history. Who knew oysters were once so abundant and cheap!

Found out recently Ellis Island was first called "Oyster Island".

This is a history of New York City as told through the oyster trade. It was a great concept and very interesting in places, but probably 1/3 longer than it needed to be, and so I found myself losing interest at various points. I also definitely didn't need so many historical oyster recipes, most of which sound very gross.

It's also a star lower than it likely should be because I didn't find the narrator to be very strong. So I'd consider trying another of Kurlansky's books under better reading conditions.

History of Oysters in NYC

Grist detail around how prominent oysters have been in the history of New York City. Lots of interesting stories and facts that often slip through the cracks in traditional story telling. Highly recommend!

The history of New York - seen through the focus of Crassostrea Virginica.

When the first settlers came to what is now known as Manhattan, they were struck by the clean water and 'sweet-smelling' air. The land was full of game, and he waters teemed with fish. And underneath it all was an almost-obscene amount of oysters of a size never before seen by any of them. Reports of foot-long oysters were not rare, and archeological remains show that this was probably only a slight exaggeration. And these oysters were still smaller than what has been found in older middens, showing that the native population had enjoyed the same bounty for hundreds of years, and had taken the biggest oysters in centuries past.

Kurlansky mixes anatomical details about the American oyster (Crassostrea Virginica), which is similar to but different from the European oyster (Ostrea Edulis), with the history of the emerging settlement of New Amsterdam, and the subsequently renamed New York. The Americans became known as voracious eaters, especially of oysters. Before the hot dog, the oyster was the quintessential New York street-food. It was a cheap treat that suited everyone. From the poorest beggars, who could feed his family on a basket of oysters from a street vendor, to the dozen oysters served as a starter at any function, oysters were eaten by just about everyone. Statistics are unreliable, but even at the end of the 19th century New Yorkers ate on average 180 oysters a year. The population dipped in the 18th century, until it was discovered how to re-seed oyster beds with 'spats' imported from elsewhere. The population finally collapsed at the turn of the 20th century in a combination of overfishing and pollution, and it has taken over a century for the oyster to even start to reestablish itself in the New York estuary.

The Oyster is a filter feeder, which is both good and bad news. It's great at cleaning up organic waste, but it can also spread diseases such as cholera. And it accumulates heavy metals and other pollutants. There is now a concerted effort to rebuild the oyster beds of the estuary with used oyster shells - the preferred surface for the young oysters to attach to. The oysters growing in the Hudson today are probably not very healthy to eat, but they might be in a couple of decades!

I really enjoyed this book. It is about the history of New York City as much as it is the history of the oyster.

A charming read about Olde New York when oysters and oystering were a huge business - a cheap & accessible food until the waters of New York became too polluted, and oyster consumption was associated with typhoid due to exposure of the shellfish to raw sewage (last beds closed in 1927). A sad and, unfortunately predictable ecological tale with a splash of optimism at the end as various environmental efforts are chronicled. Also some interesting explanations of the origins of the term "Yankees" and the naming of the Catskills

"Obviously, if you don't love life, you can't enjoy an oyster." On this, Kurlansky and I are in accord. The book itself is more a history of New York than of oysters, and a particular history of New York at that, chronicling the staggering speed with which a city, teeming with people and industry suffocated a vibrant ecosystem with excretory excess. He chronicles how a site of organic abundance is transmuted into one of material abundance, with the poisoning of the oyster beds severing the link between the living sea and the sea of commerce. There's a fascinating class politics to this decoupling, too, as oysters go from a ubiquitous and egalitarian snack to a luxury good.

For Kurlansky, this urban tragedy stems from a failure to understand the wealth and abundance of the natural world. But while I recognize the almost moral imperative to address such a lack with books like this, I am perhaps more cynical. To put it another way, I worry that this kind of framing puts too much weight on knowledge and information, and too little on action. It overlooks the path dependencies and incentives, which make it easier (and profitable) to leave certain kinds of knowledge inert. This is not, however, to dismiss the importance of affirming what is wonderful about oysters and estuaries and the way humans and nature are connected through habits of immediate consumption. Oysters possess the unique ability to reveal when are living in sync with the natural world—and when society is literally full of shit. This book also made me think about the difference between progress and change, and what losses do and do not register.

Some facts/quotes I liked:
-"The only thing New Yorkers ignore more than nature is history." (xvi)
-"New York is a city that does not plan; it creates situations, and then deals with them." (xvii)
-Oysters are not a particularly efficient food source; one of the the things that makes them so unusual is that throughout history, they have been eaten for the pleasure of the act.
-While nature inclines to symmetry, oysters are inherently asymmetrical, with a flat top shell and curved bottom. Only the bottom side of an oyster can attach to something, meaning that oysters always rest on that deeper shell. Another unique feature of oysters is that the principal determinants of their size, shape, color, and taste, are not genetic but contextual- where they are planted and how they are grown matters more than genus or species.
-Apparently, "Yankee" comes from "Jankee," a derogatory British word for the Dutch, which joins the name John and the word cheese." (61)
-The Romans associated oysters with wealth; and their denarius coin was allegedly worth one oyster (115).
-The history of oyster farming (and humanity's repeated rediscovery of aquaculture) is fascinating. Because oysters are sedentary creatures, they exist somewhere in between agriculture and hunting. Another interesting aspect of aquaculture is that the ideal environment for reproduction and for growth are not the same (118).
-"No modern invention has proved as efficient as a good shucker with an oyster knife." (184); perhaps not everything can be automated
-"The New York of the second half of the nineteenth century was a city overtaken by oystermania. It was usual for a family to have two oyster dinners a week, one of which would be on Sunday. It was one of the few moments in culinary history when a single food, served in more or less the same preparations, was commonplace for all socio-economic levels. It was the food of Delmonico's and the food of the dangerous slum." (214)
-"It is hard to explain to those who don't do it by what strange impulse humans take these primitive creatures with their hearts pounding and slide them down their throats. It certainly has been something New Yorkers did with passion. The best explanation is that a fresh oyster from a clean sea fills the palate with the taste of all the excitement and beauty—the essence—of the ocean. If the water is not pure, that, too, can be tasted in the oyster. So if someday New Yorkers can once again wander into their estuary, pluck a bivalve, and taste the estuary of the Hudson in all the "freshness and sweetness" that was once there, the cataclysm humans have unleashed on New York will have been at last undone. But that day is far off." (279)
-And finally, a truly wonderful and specific acknowledgement to his wife: "the deeper shell of our bivalve, who makes us happy as oysters—no reason to think clams are any happier just because they don't make attachments and can hop on one foot."

Finally finished my oyster book. Thought it was actually pretty good & interesting.

3.5 rounded up. When a good friend who dwells in New England and enjoys oysters as much as I do (or maybe make that "did" which I will explain momentarily) I grabbed "The Big Oyster" at the library and devoured it in just several sittings. Shucks, while it's the story of the oyster in North America (although it includes Europe as well on occasion) but it's just as much a history of New York and particularly, Manhattan (from whence I came) which was even more interesting to me. The author adds a bit of humor at times and generally tries to keep the pace moving, but the subject matter dictates a little more scientific detail than I was ready to consume (face it, oysters are slow.) I I musseled through and enjoyed the book overall. Now I may never eat a raw oyster again since I learned they are actually alive when consumed. (I erroneously thought that once shucked and opened, that they had passed on to that big half-shell in the sky.) Still, I enjoyed the read, maybe will limit myself to an oyster pan roast when I next visit the Grand Central Oyster Bar (which I highly recommend.) I know those guys are deceased. Some interesting illustrations accompany the text. Overall a fun and interesting history. No question "The Big Apple" should have more accurately been named "The Big Oyster." And with that, I shall clam up.

I'm a big fan of Kurlansky's work, and this book did not disappoint. Being a Native New Yorker, the destruction of the New York estuaries is a sad story, but hopefully one that is not permanent. I will warn potential readers that consuming oysters may never be the same experience for you again after reading this book.

Oysters were a staple of local diets long before the first colonists showed up in Manhattan, and this book uses the presence of oysters to trace New York history--from the delicacy that created prehistoric middens to the inedible survivors that hang on in the polluted muck of the 21st century. Along the way, you get an excellent overview of the events and the unique conditions that made New York into a city unlike any other in the world.