I am not afraid to admit this but this was one of the books I was worried about as one of the selections for my book club. I mean, come on. What is so interesting about a fish? It's not like it talks. Or is magical and can somehow grant wishes. No, it's a cod. These cods can grow freakishly big and have a cool Latin name, Gadus morhua, but still a cod, no less. However, every time, I think a book is going to be boring, I end up pleasantly surprised. Not only is Mark Kurlansky's Cod incredibly interesting but it's a James Beard award winner.

What?
Yes!

Cod may be a light tome but it packs a mighty punch. It details the discovery of the Cod, the supposed neverending surplus of it, the rapid decline, and efforts to save it. It was a cod's point of view on history focusing on the countries and states that were mostly affected by the cod's riches and its demise.

Also, it had fun little tidbits. I especially the surname namung system the Icelanders have. Also, there were recipes. Really delicious sounding recipes that span from the 1300s-present from every region.

I found Cod to be a cautionary tale about Man's hubris and gluttony. Fishermen were grabbing cod for their way of life and then some. It was never enough for what they had. They wanted more. Also, perhaps technology isn't such a wonderful thing.

The advances in sailing progress far too quickly for evolution to keep up. Then when it was realized, it was a little too late. It was enlightening and sobering to read about fishermen livelihood threaten especially with the restrictions in place to try to help the situation.

Cod was a very great piece of history. Maybe I will read Kurlansky's Salt next.

One of the best non fiction books I have ever read. Or in this case listened to. The audiobook was read by Richard M Davidson and he was phenomenal. Loved this book! It was extremely funny and incredibly informative. Only issue was calling John Adams an underrated founding father... Girl the alien and sedition acts.... But otherwise just awesome!!! Cod more like God.

My progress thru this book:

haha! Cod! Funny fish name

Holy shit there was so much cod in 1500

Oh wow cod was really important in like 1600! Cool!

Holy shit cod was SUPER important

Cod... started the American Revolution? Kinda?

Cod... is responsible for the slave trade? Kinda?

Man these bottom trawlers bring in so many fish! Cool!

Wow this one scientist-ish guy said that there were so many cod we’d never fish them all! Wild! Cod have like a billion kids so it’s fine

Go Iceland! No wait go Britain! No wait go Iceland! No wait go HELLO I AM THE UNITED STATES AND I CONTROL EVERYTHING ON MY CONTINENTAL SHELF BECAUSE I SAID SO. I TRUST THIS WILL HAVE NO INTERNATIONAL OR ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS. I AM THE UNITED STATES .

Fish stocks going down.

*Iceland and Britain go to war over cod a few times and almost kill each other but don’t really*

Everyone gets bottom trawlers.

Iceland: my entire economy is based off of this one fish. The entire thing. All of it. All our bank foundations rest on cod skulls

Fish stocks plummeting.

*cockney accent* oi m8 izza Spanish innit? takin our cod innit? either them or the scots innit? oi m8 the Spanish hidin the cod you reckon?

*grizzled New England fisherman accent* damn Canadians stealing our cod but don’t worry me boy the cod’ll return. The cod will return

*canadian accent* I will beat the Americans to death with a side of salt cod if they don’t let us fish fresh cod.

*icelandic accent* where’s the cod

There are no more cod. There may never be more cod. We killed them all. Yes, all. Global collapse of the marine ecosystem is imminent. Farmed fish will not save us. It is too late for regulation. It is too late for restriction. The cod are dead and they will never come back.

* pages and pages of traditional world cod recipes that were once tasty treats but are now merely historical interest *

Rating: 3.75* of five

Victorian scientists said that cod was the fish in the miracle of the loaves and fishes because there were so darn many of them....

Yeah, late to the party yet again...13 years late. I read this book, I would swear, when it came out; I recognized a few of the anecdotes, and I remember the jacket design very clearly. But a lot had slipped from my memory, and I now wonder if I actually read it, or had enough conversations about it to think I had.

Well, whatever, if it was a re-read it was a fun one. I like Kurlansky's informative-yet-chatty style, and I love the angle of view in the book...what's cod done for us as a species? So what? What's cod made possible in the world? The rise of an independent America. The agrarian horrors of African chattel slavery. The Industrial Revolution. Little stuff like that was built on the white-fleshed back of a formerly abundant fish.

I like cod. Salted, dried, fresh-frozen, the tongues, the cheeks...it's all good, as my daughter's generation says with monotonous regularity (and questionable factual basis). I never once thought about Cod, the deliverer from hunger, until the Cod Wars of the early 1970s. I remember the world reaction to Iceland going to a 200-mile fishing limit with a teenager's detached bemusement: "So? Little teeny place like that, let 'em have it, big whoop." For rhetorical effect, let's assume I was sitting in front of the TV eating Gorton's fish sticks at the time I said this, though I spent little time with the TV and less eating fish sticks as a kid.

It caused such trouble because of cod's enormous significance even now as an agribusiness output. Iceland's post-colonial economy was built on cod; Canada's Maritime provinces relied on it in those days (and on unemployment payments from the rest of Canada now that cod's commercially extinct); Norway and the UK want all there is to have so their fisheries industries don't wither away and leave them hungry as well as sailor-less.

Kurlansky wrote a very enjoyable read about a very important food-source and industrial product. I recommend it to anyone even marginally interested in the world around them, to science browsers, and to policy wonks of a scientific bent. You won't regret it.

3.

Arcygenialna literatura poruszające kwestie i zagadnienia dotykające pierwotnych podstaw ludzkiej duszy i społecznego jestestwa.

COD

Most of this book was so interesting and well written. The last few chapters had a bit too much about this bill and that law and so on and so forth but then it ended on this poignant note, “You buy out a man whose father and grandfather were fishermen, and you’re wiping out a hundred years of knowledge. A fisherman is a special person. He is a captain, a navigator, an engineer, a cutter, a gutter, an expert net mender, a market speculator. And he’s a tourist attraction. People want to come to a town where there are men with cigars in their mouth and boots on their feet mending nets. We are going to lose all that.”

I also thought the recipes, from ancient to modern, spread through the book were really fun.

A much more focused narrative than Salt, about Atlantic cod fisheries and the ways that inexpensive, salt-preserved fish changed diets and economies in Europe from the middle ages to the present. The central story of the book, though, is the way what was once regarded as a limitless resource has been fished to the edge of collapse, and the affect that has had on the communities that depend on it, and the difficulty of harnessing competing economic entities to work to restore the populations.

I obtained the audio book through my library. I had seen good reviews of Kurlansky's Milk, but wasn't convinced that a book with the focal point could be well done. Since I could get Cod and wanted something light to listen to, I thought, "Why not?"

I was pleasantly surprised. Kurlansky did a great job at explaining the history, biology, evolution, uses, and economy of the Cod and doing so in a cohesive manner that did not seem overly contrived.

The book focuses largely on the Atlantic Cod, but he does discuss other members of the Cod family in the book and how those books were viewed/used.

I saw one person refer to this book as "quirky", and that is an apt description.

An enjoyable read. Full of plenty of information that had one thinking. The resistance to the obvious decline of the cod by vested interests may have parallels in the resistance to changing our use of fossil fuels by the coal industry, as an example. I also have done a bit of online research as to how this wonderful fish has been going now that there has been a moratorium on its fishing. Not as well as I thought it might of sadly.

On a lighter side I enjoyed the recipes that frequent the end of each chapter with plenty more at the end. Anyway I'm hungry and have some Barramundi to devour.

Before you even THINK about making fun of me for reading a book about fish just know that I’ve learned a lot about trade, colonization, capitalism, geopolitics, and conservation via those fish

What a surprising and excellent read! Kurlansky entitles this book as a "Biography" of the fish that changed the world, which was evident by the history presented. Amazing that wars, and revolutions fought over it. Economies greatly depended on it. And the settlement of North America was driven by it. As a "New Englander", I have eaten my share of cod as well as chowders. I found the history fascinating (beginning with the Vikings in 1000 in the Mediterranean world where salted meats prevailed in the hot, humid climates). Through other centuries, including freezing fish by Birdseye. Unfortunately in the 20th century were fishing stocks became depleted.