Eine faszinierende Kulturgeschichte eines faszinierenden Fischs. Der besondere Fokus auf dem menschengemachten Niedergang der Kabeljaufischerei und dem Strukturwandel an atlantischen Küstenstädten hat seit 1999 nichts an Aktualität verloren. Mit unerwartet vielen historischen und modernen Rezepten aus der ganzen Welt, was angesichts der so stark zurückgegangenen Fangquoten einen sehr traurigen Beigeschmack hat.

How Cod moved the major economic markets of the world and consequently the quality of life of entire cultures for hundreds of years.Kuriansky weaves fascinating anecdotes throughout. I wouldn't have thought I could get interested but I kept signing it out over and over again until I got through it. Amazing research. And I sure have a newfound respect for the Basques! Long before the vikings, the Basques of France and Spain became a powerful trading culture because they traveled further, kept their secrets, and had the best methods for curing fish. Sailors for centuries survived long journeys on cured cod- full of protein, dried, and bitten off in hard chewy chunks. Great stories of the New England and Nova Scotian fishing industries and their grueling lives at sea.

I also have his Oysters on the Halfshell in New York, and The Last Fishing Tale. How ignorant I was that I did not know these books were on the New York Times bestseller lists, nor that many of the descendents of these centuries old families traced to Roman times, live in my area here in Maine.( thanks to a brilliant old historian who hangs out in our one room library here in town).

Despite the very lofty subtitle, Cod is a very good book on the impact of cod fishing on European and North American states. We get some early chapters on European fishing: there's apparently unconfirmed but suggestible evidence that people have been fishing from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland for centuries before John Cabot discovered them for Britain. We also learn about the various markets for cod, but of course, the biggest thing about this book is about the overfishing of cod in the Grand Banks. Fishermen kept developing more and more efficient ways to catch fish, and they acted like they'd never disappear. I was also highly amused by the descriptions of the Cod Wars (yes, multiple wars!) between the UK and Iceland.

Interestingly, this book came out in 1997, just a few years after Canada established a moratorium on cod fishing because of the depletion. I knew the moratorium was still in place, so it was a bit sad to read Kurlansky's various interviews with fishermen confidently stating that the fish would be back soon, and here we are, 23 years after this book was published.

This is a fun commodity history, though it's possible there's something more recent to read that includes data since 1997. At this point, I don't know if sustainable fishing is ever possible at this point. You can't seem to stop people for catching as much as they can.

Throughout the book and even more at the end, Kurlansky likes to include various (historical) recipes involving cod, and while they can be interesting, they're a bit mind-numbing in audiobook form.

“It is harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done.”

reading this was swift and brisk yet epic and harsh like the great Atlantic waters the cod claims as its home.

informative like a high school history textbook but told with a sense of comfort and familiarity- the way my grandpa would share his collected wisdoms on all things fish (Grumpy, u would’ve loved this book). wedged in between chapters were collections of cod recipes of old and new, helping absorb the richness the historical facts left behind.

this book takes u on a rocky boat ride away from the city for a glimpse of the harsh realities of fishing, and fishing cod - a fish so influential it’d make today’s TikTok stars full of envy, and full of fish n’ chips.

Those who argue that economic exploitation of natural "resources" can go on for ever because it always has gone on, should read Mark Kurlansky's book "Cod, A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World". The book is not primarily about the collapse of stocks in the early 1990s but rather a fascinating investigation of all aspects of this fish - cultural, economic and political - without which the American Revolution might never have taken place or at least have been delayed many decades.How so? You may ask. Simply put, it was cod that turned the struggling, half-starving settlers in the New England colonies of into an international commercial power. The colonists took poor quality salted cod, the cod that could not be solt in Europe, to the slave islands of the Caribbean where the high-protein food was fed to the African slaves. for the return, the ships loaded with molasses from which rum was produced back in New England. "The West Indies presented a growing market for the rejects, for anything that was cheap. In fact, West India was the commercial name for the lowest-quality salt cold," write Mark Kurlansky.

In addition, though New England ships were not slave carriers they did supply salt cod to slave merchants who used the fish to buy slaves. At the time when New Englanders were increasingly preoccupied with "freedom", they were noticeably selective about whose freedom they were championing.

"The French politician Alexis de Tocqueville, in his 1835 study...wrote about an inherent contradiction in the New England character....New England was the great champion of individual liberty and even openly denouncing slavery, all the while growing ever more affluent by providing Caribbean planters with barrels of cheap food to keep enslaved people working 16 hours a day. By the first decade of the eighteenth centruy, more than 300 ships left Boston in a good year for the West Indies."

The great danger with single subject books, such as this one, is that - as the little girl observed, "This book tells me more about dolphins than I wanted to know." Fortunately Kurlansky avoids this pitfall. The book is a great mixture of history, recipes, curious trivia and useful analysis. A good read for anyone curious about this fish that was once cheap and ubiquitous but which, despite warnings for decades about overshishing, is now next to impossible to obtain. What does this tell us about the future of global commercial fish stocks which, according to the UN's FAO are 60% fully exploited, overexploited or depleted. And the situation has only deteriorated in the last decade.

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Kurlansky must have been the child that read the small print on the cereal box. Someone who has to read. He has collected tidbits on fish from across centuries, literature and cultures.

It sort of reads like a bathroom book (by that I mean a book that can easily be opened at any spot and read — and then easily put down). There are boatloads of obscure trivia, some more interesting than others.

The connection between cod and slavery caught my attention. Dried cod was one of the cheapest ways to feed slaves in the Caribbean who worked sixteen hours a day.

And, for fun, imagine a cod club! Over 100 men in Minnesota getting together for a lunch of boiled cod and potatoes. I feel so deprived! ::sarcasm alert::

Bottom line: this was a good companion on my walks, but once is enough.

A book about … fish.

Yep, no kidding. And author Mark Kurlansky makes this informative and entertaining, I enjoyed this history of cod fishing.

I have heard described this genre as micro-history, meaning a hyper-focused inquiry into a specific subject. So rather than write a history of fishing, started with speculation about pre-history and running up to multi-national super ships and regulation, a micro-history instead can be about … cod.

Kurlansky explores details of the history and importance of this resource and that focus forms tangential stories to be told as they relate to cod.

Interestingly, the Basque people had a significant impact on our subject and now I want to read a history of those folks.

Better than expected, Kurlansky is a good writer and shares this with personality and wit. It is, though, still a history and so can get dry as we poke around the tributaries of the subject.

This was interesting, covering the history of cod fishing all over the place, but mostly Canada, Iceland/Greenland and the demand for salt-cod in Spain, the West Indies and of course Britain.

For me however it missed a trick, and I would have liked to have a part of the book focus on the fish, not the fishing. There was a void where the scientific details of the many types of cod could have been explored and assessed. Instead we get a few of these types of facts spread through the narrative. For me, the "Biography of the fish that changed the world" needed to have this detail around the fish. A more accurate title would have replaced the word 'fish' with 'fishing'

But we get a good history of the fishing techniques and the boats, and we get an detailed history of the fishing grounds, the trade routes, the laws, the wars and the politics. Also worth a mention are the recipes spread through the book, and a concentration of these at the end however these all got a bit samey for me.

There are a lot of reviews already which explain the histories from the Basque voyaging to Canada to fish but keeping it secret for so long to the commercial operators today without cod to catch. I wouldn't do it justice here to try and pull together a narrative.

For me, just a 3 star read, with the biography missing its main component! If you are less interested in cod and more interested in cod fishing and it's history, this may be the book for you.

Fascinating history of Cod. The book covers the idea of a national coast and how nations defined their coast.

This is a fisheye's view of history, as seen from a different perspective. It tracks the discovery of cod by Europeans, it's infiltration as a dietary staple and it's decline from over-fishing. It also represents much more.

This book takes history, from the discovery of the Americas, to present-day, and twists it slightly, shining a light on the events of the past as seen from a different angle. These are my favorite types of history books. I know about the arguments of which European actually discovered the New World, and I also know about the fishing wars between the British and the Spanish, but to see it from the angle of the fish, so-to-speak, is really refreshing.

For example, in the cod's history the only thing of importance that happened during the two 20th century world wars was that they were left alone, and fish stocks recovered. The greatest impact of these wars happened afterwards, as modern warfare technology e.g. radar, was applied to the industry of fishing. Also, I had no idea that the cod trade was so heavily implicated in the slave trade, nor in the American War of Independence.

This is also a well-written book - I read this at the beach, for heaven's sake! It flowed beautifully, included many interesting historical facts, which didn't get in the way, and also didn't bore with too much fish-detail. This is essentially a story about the lives of fishermen and merchants, governments and religions touched by one common thread. It's also a warning about carelessly using up the world's resources, and not understanding the impact of playing with biodiversity. Great book.

There is no way you could ever get me to eat cod, despite my partial Norwegian background where they eat a variety of disgusting fish dishes, the most famous being lutefisk, a kind of rotten, spoiled gelatinous mess. But I loved this book. Kurlansky is another John McPhee, supplying all sorts of interesting details. Turns out cod has been extremely important to civilization and almost as essential as bread. It was easy to fish and preserve and probably made discovery of North America by the Vikings possible. Fascinating.

The most important industry/food source I had never known anything about! This was a very well-written, engaging and fun historical read. Mark Kurlansky really excels at history writing. My least favorite bits and the beginning and the end, where he tries to be a bit more of a ~journalist~ than a historian. Really sad to read about the effects of overfishing and the way the environment is tangled up with world history and economics. Humans are wild. Always have been. Also damn, fish can be huge!!!