The title of The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell is a nod to The Big Apple and could very well be considered a solid stand-alone history of New York itself.

Mark Kurlansky's book titles do not get the reader's blood pumping:

Salt
Nonviolence
Cod

You'd half expect to fall asleep before finishing the intro. But keep pushing on and you'll find a highly enjoyable read filled with interesting facts. Seriously, Kurlansky can make oysters and cod interesting. That's impressive!

The Big Oyster takes us through the history of the oyster, its life cycle, its biology and its importance to mankind.*

That last topic mainly focuses on North America's relationship with the oyster and more specifically New York city's, for Manhattan and this particular shellfish are particularly linked in growth and decline. It doesn't seem to matter if you're a Wall Street fat-cat or a loincloth-wearing native, humans used and abused the little buggers. Though I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of both (with a great section on the "Gangs Of New York" Five Points area), it's the whens, hows, wheres, and what fors that make truly make The Big Oyster a fascinatingly good read!


* FUN FACT: Did you know pearls do not come from oysters?

This book is a deep dive into the history of New York City via its long lost oyster heritage. Ever wonder about the names Pear St. or Oyster Bay Long Island. Even odd place names like Hackensack - Native American.

The first half of this history-culinary-environmental tale is full of ah ha moments as you are reading (I was listening on audio) and you are struck with a wide-eyed surprise or little known fact that explains something intimate about NYC.

The book is interrupted throughout with old oyster recipes that had I been reading, I would have skipped.

The second half of the story crawls with a detailed "and then this happened" approach. With so much amazing information available, it is easy to see that curating the book to an appropriate length would be hard.

Overall, a great read for history buffs and those who love New York.

Love love love this book. Interesting information about oysters in general and awesome history of NYC in relation to oysters. I work downtown Manhattan, so the history is this book was great for me. Highly recommend this book!!!

Everything this guy writes is great, and they're all related.

It's a great history of New York City and an even better natural history of the oyster. Ignore the recipes.

This is a great book that combines the geographical, cultural, and biological history of New York through the story of the lowly oyster. Before "The Big Apple" the city was literally called "The Big Oyster" because of the prolific fertility of its waters -- arguably the northern equivalent of the Everglades in Florida. Low and behold, through over-harvesting and pollution, all seafood within the region --though rebounding, particularly in recent years-- will likely remain inedible throughout our lifetimes. A chilling warning.

This was as much a history of New York City as it was a book about oysters. In fact, if you're hoping for a wide-ranging book about oysters throughout the world and throughout history, you might be disappointed. It begins with the discovery of Manhattan by Europeans and ends with the 20th century destruction of the oyster beds around NYC. They may say the world is your oyster, but for New Yorkers, the city is the world, I guess.

That said, the author occasionally strikes out to mention oysters in other places, but usually in relation to NYC oysters. And to be fair, NYC was the oyster capital of the world for a good century or so. But the author also spends time exploring aspects of NYC history that are only tangentially related to oysters.

Nevertheless, given those parameters, I found the book interesting with compelling descriptions of all aspects of oystering around NYC, from their place in the ecosystem to the cultivation techniques to the culture that grew up around their consumption to the industries that were created and even the recipes for their preparation from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

If you're okay with the book having a New York outlook on oysters, then you'll enjoy this. I know it's left me wanting to enjoy oysters more often.

The Big Oyster traces the intertwined history of oysters and the city of New York. From the earliest Dutch colonial settlements all the way to to the end of the 19th (20th+ including the epilogue) century, these bivalve’d delicacies have filled bellies, made fortunes, and according to Kurlansky, built the world’s most central entrepot.

Generally, well written and equally well researched a highly enjoyable book that delicately pleases eyes and brain alike is the result. However, not all is good here. Like too many cooks spoiling the proverbial pot, a plethora of oyster-based recipes, well exceeding the number 50+ mars a more pleasing flow and only ends up polluting a more seamless read (this would’ve been so much more effective if collected as an appendix). Additionally, a loss of steam that pitter patters across the last 50 some pages due to loss of focus, is compounded by an unusually anti-anthropic note in the epilogue that does nothing more than catalogue the environmental destruction of concerning the waterways of New York. Ending things on a less than positive note won’t exactly do wonders for your final thoughts.

In either case, this is a fun little read that can supply your reading needs for a short holiday.

Enjoy raw or cooked.

I’m a big old History nerd, and I loved that this book was as much about the History of New York, as it was about oysters. Kuslansky, as usual hits a pretty great balance between basic Science, and Cultural History in this story, about the luxury shellfish of the modern world (which I have never eaten and probably never will.) Now I know more about oysters than I ever expected to, thanks to this interesting read.

I was disappointed in this book, despite loving his previous writing. It's more of a rapid fire history of New York City with a little bit of oyster lore throw in here and there. Large sections have no relation to oysters, oystering, or the oyster industry at all. It was even boring in parts, which lead to me taking so long to read it.

A good read. I liked Mark Kurlansky's other book "Cod" a whole lot, and have had an interest in the oyster industry lately as a resident of the Florida Panhandle. When I saw this, I purchased it without looking into it too much and didn't even realize it was 'New York City' focused until I started reading, though in hindsight the title probably should've clued me in. The geographic focus of this book is 95% New York, 4% Britain/France, and 1% other, if you are curious. No mention of Apalachicola oysters, to my disappointment.

The history is all pretty interesting. I learned a lot, and that's what matters most with this sort of book. As Mark Kurlansky did with "Cod", it's all delivered in a way that doesn't feel like slogging through your high-school or college text books. My only real gripe is that the book indulges in a few too many tangents which are only related back to oysters in the flimsiest of ways. Charles Dickens overstays his welcome. Actress Lillian Russel gets a number of pages, I guess because... she ate some oysters? As did apparently every other citizen of New York. 125 oysters per person annually, in fact; one of many things you will learn in this book. So I'm not so sure what made her special and worth discussing in the context of oysters. There are a handful of these moments throughout, but they are minor nitpicks.

If you like history or environmentalism, this is worth your time. If you are looking for new oyster recipes and can decipher ye olde english, this is also worth your time.

I now know A LOT of oyster recipes