A fascinating review of the history of the Atlantic cod fisheries. While I knew of the stories of the Grand banks and Georges banks from my University days (I doubt there is a Marine Biologist in the world who has not studied this classic case of overfishing), I had never thought about the wider social implications of the collapse of this fishery and I certainly had never wondered too much about the sociological role of the animal. It turns out that Gadus morhua, the Atlantic cod was a major player in a whole heap of human history. The Vikings cold dried it and used it to cross the ocean, the Spanish discovered the New world but kept it secret because they did not want to have to share the fishing grounds, in the 1500’s cod was already changing trade routes and ports were gaining prominence based on its affect. All quite fascinating.

The book starts with a modern day (or at least, 1990’s) peek at the state of the fisheries in Newfoundland and then continues on from there. It is well written, easy to read and thoroughly enjoyable. While it tells a very polarised aspect of history it is a side that would not often be thought of; how many people have thought about Cod when they were examining the American Slave history?

Interspersed through the text are recipes and historical titbits. As I do not eat fish it is very unlikely I will ever try them but reading them is an added view of the historical time in which they were written and for most of the book I quite enjoyed them. At the end however one encounter about forty pages worth of recipes and I might take those slowly.

Aside from the overdose of Cod recipes at the end I would thoroughly endorse this book, I was delighted to read such an expanded story to the basic overexploitation story of the Grand banks.

Many years ago when I was in university, I went through a phase of being intensely interested in cod. I wrote a paper about the Newfoundland codfish moratorium in one class, and I and another student jauntily declared ourselves 'pro-cod' in the tutorial for another class (whatever that meant - it was fun to this geeky then-teen, and I think we developed some kind of a pro-cod chant). My interest subsided after that, but I think back on it fondly.

And teenage me was right, the history and politics of cod are really interesting, though far from jaunty. I enjoyed learning more in this microhistory, even if it's from the 90s and no longer current. Well, it is kind of current, because the Atlantic cod stocks still aren't back, decades later. I was interested to learn about the role played by the trade in salt cod in the triangular trade, contributing to the slave-based economy, as well as the hubris and missteps that have led to the collapse of fisheries once viewed as based on inexhaustible supplies.

I have now completed the full transformation into my father by reading Cod, the microhistory that launched a thousand microhistories. I came to it after reading Paul Greenberg’s “Four Fish” (spoiler alert: fish number 3 is cod).

It is a surprisingly light and enjoyable read, a political, economic, and social history of the North Atlantic all through the lens of cod fishing. Especially during the early portions of the book, covering the Age of Sailing and earlier, I was not very well-versed in the history (or in maritime...anything), and the subject of cod fishing actually served as a very good grounding point from which it was all easier to absorb.

It has been about fifteen years since this book first came out, so the final section’s portrait of the “present” state of cod fisheries and overfishing is now the recent past (“Four Fish” is a good continuation where this book leaves off). Overall, though, it is full of interesting facts and shines a light on the lives and histories of Newfoundlanders, Icelandic fisherman, the Basques, New Englanders, and more. An educational read.

Plus, it ends with a collection of recipes from around the world and across centuries! I read them for entertainment more than to attempt them, but I did notice some large fillets of bacalao at 22nd and Irving Market today...

This is an excellent book and it is well written. I took a flyer on it and was truly mesmerized. Who would have thought that a book about a common food fish would be so entertaining. Mark Kurlansky gives a history of the fish and how it impacted the world. His ode to the cod make you take a different look at the history of the new world that is never told in school. It even has recipes and it is not a cookbook!

Made sense living in such a heavy fish and chips culture at the moment.

The ideas presented by Mr. Kurlansky should have produced several different books. There are ideas presented here that need to be followed up. Clearly, a serious historical work was not intended. The book is not footnoted. As an amateur historian, I find this problematic and discount the books value. But setting that aside, the book is interesting and well written. Most non-historians will love the book if the topic interests them.

I debated between 3 stars and 4 stars... my short attention span throughout the length of the book was mainly due to the fact that I was listening to it on the Audible app while taking walks with my daughter and furry canine.

I appreciate the width and depth that Kurlansky goes into when researching and writing on the foodie topics of his books - first Salt and now Cod.

I was excited to listen to this book and share my findings with my husband, a lover of fish and fishing. I have since moved onto another audio book, but the two things I recall from Cod:
1) Cod are stronger than salmon.
2) At one point in history (a long time ago, but do not ask me the year), people RELUCTANTLY ate lobster when they could no longer fish. And they were ASHAMED to admit it.

While one would think a book entirely devoted to codfish would enervate, if not actually annoy, in fact this work is a fascinating examination of the human tendency to greed as played out on a global scale. This is easily equal in quality and complexity, to my mind, with a novel by Dostoevsky, for instance. It follows the trail of guilt and rapacity from early times to today's sad, inadequate harvest and is witty in to the bargain. A great read.

When a fox gets hungry it hunts for food. When it has caught and eaten something, it knows it’s full and then rests or plays or does whatever it is that foxes do when they’re not hungry anymore. For most of our history, when we were hunter-gatherers, things must have been similar with us. We might have cached a small store of food to help us survive the winter, but we knew better than to stockpile more than we could reasonably expect to eat.

Things changed. Somewhere along the line we learned the trick of turning the excess we might acquire of one commodity into a whole host of other goods, through trade. Extra meat or grain might be traded for other kinds of consumables or for handicrafts or luxury items of one sort or another. Item A was suddenly convertible into Items X, Y, and Z. And while Item A might be something I had limited use for, I would gladly take as much of Items X, Y and Z as I could get.

You might say that there are two kinds of hunger. There’s the hunger that is easily sated, and then there is the insatiable hunger: I can only eat so many steaks of venison, but I can never have too many golden cups. It doesn’t matter that the first (as food) is a necessity and the latter is not. Such is my hunger for golden cups that I will gladly kill every last deer in my hunting grounds to convert them into more golden cups. Finally, through my own folly, there will be no deer left to satisfy even the first kind of hunger.

Kurlansky’s book charts the effects of this same process on the humble codfish. Or, you might say, the not so humble codfish, for in days of yore it apparently stretched across the sea like some composite Leviathan. The fish was infinitely greater in number and the nations fought, literally and viciously, for the right to catch it. It was the salty gold of the North Atlantic, the inexhaustible resource. Until it was exhausted.

Following the cod through Western history is, to me, the fascination of this book. We begin with the Basques, who had discovered the great codfishing grounds of Newfoundland’s Grand Banks (and quite possibly had discovered the New World) well before the days of Columbus. But Kurlansky leads us also through the colonial era, the entanglement of the fish in the slave trade, and its pivotal role in the American Revolution and the independence of Iceland.

It’s unfortunate the story must end as a tragedy. It’s tempting to blame steam-power, trawling nets, and industrialized fishing techniques. But the real villain here is that second kind of hunger, the acquisitive spirit that wants always to turn more and more of Item A into more and more of Items X, Y, and Z. If we could save ourselves from that, we might save the cod as well.

4.5 stars

Mark Kurlansky is amazing!!! I was amazed when I came across Kurlansky and how he writes microhistories about random subjects, ranging anywhere from salt to paper to milk to 1968 to Martha Reeves and The Vandellas song "Dancing in the Street" to the one that brought him attention and won the James Beard Award: the one about cod. Mark Kurlansky explores codfish from every angle in this book: be it world history, food history, biology, its environmental standing, as well as its culinary standing. If there is a particular authority regarding what one may want to know about the codfish, this is it.

Cod is told in chronological order as far as exploration is concerned. It had an impact on the explorers and their voyage westward, the trade within New England, just about anything that can be applied to Iceland and their affairs around the world, as well as Clarence Birdseye and his methods to preserve food by freezing it. In between chapters are recipes and methods to preparing cod to eat. There are also quotes about cod from prolific figures such as Henry David Thoreau.

Kurlansky knows exactly what he is talking about as far as making cod the star of this book is concerned. Perhaps it did inevitably stray into the subject matter and force the codfish into the backseat and I will say that I will have to read over the recipes and culinary sections in order to click with them, but this book certainly laid the groundwork and addressed the void about microhistories about any given fish and/or seafood.

This is a book that is definitely worth checking out! It is slim enough and the information is engaging, so that one will learn a lot and enjoy it at the same time.

This was a lovely little book all about the history of the cod fish and the people who ultimately contributed to its demise. I really enjoy reading historical non-fiction and Kurlansky's prose makes reading this book a joy. I learned more than I ever thought that I could know about cod and how this one fish was one of the most important trading items in history. At one time, man never thought that he could cut down all of the trees. Look what happened in Eastern Europe. It was almost completely deforested in just a few hundred years. This same thing happened to many places in the US as well. People once thought that you could walk across the Atlantic from England to the US Northeast coast because there were so many cod. Today, you're lucky if you find a school of 15,000 fish. This is just one species sure to be a voice for others.
The book is also nicely inter laden with many historical recipes for cod, some dating back to the 1300's through the present. I loved this book and look forward to checking out more of the author's work.

I have this book on Kindle and I wish I could get an update or new edition that updates the cod recovery status in the North Atlantic. Kurlansky does a wonderful job teaching us about the fish, and its impact upon societies and economies across multiple regions. He made me really care about its survival. 20 years on since its publication the fish is making a comeback.