Part New York City history and part environmentalist warning, this was an entertaining summary of how an area that the Dutch thought was one of the most perfect and abundant natural wonders literally got killed by ten thousand pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey.

By the late 19th century, New York Harbor, along with New Jersey and the Long Island Sound, supplied all of Europe and the Western United States with oysters. That's why, instead of "The Big Apple," NYC should have been called "The Big Oyster."

This is all familiar territory if you have read Up In the Old Hotel, Low Life, and other works dealing with the Five-Points and the Tenderloin. However, it did focus on how the oyster was the one food that was consumed by both rich and poor and contained a lot of old recipes from Delmonicos and the various cookbooks of the day (many of these recipes sounded kind of awful on paper).

It was the French who seemed to also find these "cooked" recipes revolting and insisted on eating them raw with a mirapois and horseradish, which is the most familiar nowadays.

But it does makes me want to go to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central when it finally re-opens September 7.

I remember this as four star. Let's see what the re-reading feels like.

I especially loved the information that Wall St used to be next to a wall and Broadway was the main route out of town towards Albany.

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I am really liking this, even the second time through. Now I want to read/re-read more Kurlansky.


Requested Cod and The Food of a Younger Land through I.L.L.

This piece satisfies every member of the audience. Part encyclopedia, part treatise to ecological preservation; Kurlansky has managed to produce piece which draws attention to the careless pursuit of economic prosperity via a bivalve’s experience of the development of America’s most prolific municipal wonders, New York City.

If a reader cannot find themselves totally entertained by the history, they may at least acknowledge and appreciate the considerable investigation required to produce such a magnificently thorough account of the origins of New England.

Although this is at the story of oysters and the oyster industry around New York city, it is also a social history of the city told around the oyster industry, its presence in local life and the people who lived by it. There is an environmental overtone to the book as well, a cautionary tale of how humans have destroyed oyster beds and some have learned to grow them in different ways in different places, but it is a different animal from what it originally started as, both on the eastern seaboard and in Europe and Asia. It is quite an interesting book for anyone that is interested in this tasty delicacy now, its history or that of it's industry, and the history of New York as well.

The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky was a delightful look at the history of not only the oyster but of New York City. I don't even like oysters (there is something about the rawness of the experience), but I thought this book was so interesting, complete with many recipes in addition to a well-researched history that gave me a lot more insight. I have become such a fan of Mark Kurlansky and his offbeat research into the obscure staples of our lives that we just take for granted, such as salt, cod, and of course, oysters.

"Oysters were true New Yorkers. They were food for gourmets, gourmands, and those who were simply hungry; tantalizing the wealthy in stately homes and sustaining the poor in wretched slums; a part of city commerce and a part of international trade."

By the man who wrote Salt and Cod, both awesome books that use the aforementioned products to trace out the development of the world itself, comes another book along the same wonderful lines, but this one with a narrower focus: the oyster beds of New York City. I found this to be a fascinating read, and it gave me lots of insight into New York that I didn't even know I was lacking. I was born and Raised in New Jersey, and I was astounded by how little I knew about the history and evolution of NYC before reading this book. Wonderfully told, equal parts science, history, and a philosophical examination of man's relationship with nature- if you liked the other two, read this. If you never read the other two, read this anyway :)

Learned more about oysters than I ever could have wanted to know and how oysters and the history of New York City were tried together from the European discovery of Long Island and Manhattan to the later 20th century.

The estuaries surrounding the (today's) boroughs of New York City provided millions of oysters from before Henry Hudson sailed into the harbor (he was offered oysters by the local Nativwe Americans) through the 1980's with the Clean Water Act which hopefully will eventually allow the oysters to return. Only time will tell.

Of course, Kurlansky provides scientific information on the life of the oyster - ones from the Hudson River area, Chesapeake Bay, the French beds as well as the English ones. At one time, these beds provided hundreds of millions of oysters for the dining pleasure of not only residents of NYC but were shipped across North America and the Atlantic to Europe. Just like today's hot dog carts, in the 1800's and early 1900's, there were oyster sellers practically on every corner. Dingy oyster cellars to the renowned Delmonico's and Dowling catered to the massive demand for oysters from the residents.

Eventually, pollution devastated the oyster beds after slowly destroying the taste and causing cholera epidemics as the oysters attempted to filter the sewage pouring into the waters.

Kurlansky provides numerous recipes (some starting with nearly a hundred oysters) as well as numerous asides from shucking contests, distinguished visitors like Charles Dickens and Diamond Jim Brady and some truly extraordinary banquets that convinced outsiders of Americans gluttony and extraordinary ability to eat copious amounts of food.

I'm personally not a fan of raw oysters and the idea that I would be eating a still living creature, just stops the idea completely.

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Even aside from what an enjoyable writer Kurlansky is, how you feel about food writing in general and oysters in particular, this was as engaging a history of New York City as any I have read. Also both this book with regard to New York and Salt with regard to England make it quite clear how the story of pollution and destruction of the environment in the course of food production is by no means a problem that just appeared in the last half century.

I think future editions of this book is Oysters in N.Y. or something like that. The history of the oyster in New York Harbor, Long Island and the surrounding areas. I've never really heard of oysters from New York ? But, back then the area was loaded w/ the delicious bivalves. So much in fact, that poor people ate them, as well as the rich. In some ' oyster taverns ' they were so cheap that one can have an all you can eat oyster buffet for .06 cents !!! Nice read if you like oysters ( to eat I mean ).

This book is more than just the history of the oyster, it is really the history of the city of New York through the rise and fall of the popularity of oysters. I learned quite a few things in this book, both about oysters and about the NY area, which were fascinating. Among them that Julius Caesar added the Leap Day to February to add an extra day of Oyster season.

Overall, this did not compare to Salt by Kurlansky, which was phenomenal. Perhaps that is because the story of the oyster is not as big of a scope as salt, but I couldn't help comparing them as I read. This tracks the popularity with both rich and poor, over fishing, impact of pollution and eventual downfall of NYC oyster economy.

I've never been a big fan of oysters, and after reading how they have caused both cholera and typhoid outbreaks, not sure I will be jumping on that bandwagon any time soon.

I'm a big Kurlansky fan and I really loved the concept of this book and the way it was written, however, it felt like the ending was too rushed after a big buildup of a common theme throughout the rest of the book. This book painted a new perspective for me of NYC and I would truly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about this beloved city's history. I also walk away from this knowing a ton of random facts about oysters!

UPDATE:
I've finished the book now, and my opinion hasn't changed:
Boring and repetitive.
There is simply not a book's worth of things to say about oysters.

Accordingly, this book is maybe 15% about oysters and the rest about NYC social-cultural history (including other types of food, such as lobsters).
Luckily, the overall-NYC part is usually interesting. But you have to plow through so much repetition about oysters to find the worthwhile parts.

(To repeat from my earlier review):
On the plus side, I've learned many interesting tidbits about NYC history in general. For instance, I had no idea how much prostitution there was in the early-mid 1800s. Why Long Island developed the way it did. That NYC used to have a good fire department before the British took over the city during the American Revolution.

This would have made a good chapter in, for instance, Russell Shorto's book about NYC, "The Island at the Center of the World." It would provide some nice cultural context to the history.
Or, to look at it the opposite way, perhaps this could have been an unusual cookbook, with historical and modern recipes mixed in with historical context.

If you're really, really interested in oysters, read a chapter. Then try one of the recipes.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
(I'm nearly 2/3 done, and yes, I will finish reading this book, because it's for a book club, and a member of the club whom I greatly respect assures us that the book gets better once it moves into the 19th and 20th centuries... uh, but I'm already well into the 19th, and I'm not seeing improvement.)

So, my review so far:
How much is there to say about oysters?

In fact, there's almost nothing about oysters in this nearly 300-page book. Maybe 30 pages, in total, and most of that is either repetitive (how to use rakes to collect oysters) or recipes.

On the plus side, I've learned many interesting tidbits about NYC history in general. For instance, I had no idea how much prostitution there was in the early-mid 1800s. Why Long Island developed the way it did. That NYC used to have a good fire department before the British took over the city during the American Revolution.

This would have made a good chapter in, for instance, Russell Shorto's book about NYC, "The Island at the Center of the World." It would provide some nice cultural context to the history.
Or, to look at it the opposite way, perhaps this could have been an unusual cookbook, with historical and modern recipes mixed in with historical context.

If you're really, really interested in oysters, read a chapter. Then try one of the recipes.