Kurlansky does it again. His award-winning “Cod: A Brief Biography of the Fish that Changed the World” is superb but this one is less so, my opinion. Even though both “Cod” and “The Basque” are chronological histories, it’s the superior structure of a journey that traces the movement of cod-based cultures around the Atlantic rim that is a bit more compelling. However, in both texts Kurlansky uses the theme of ‘the noble struggle’ on which to string his pearls of history. He traces the Basques’ noble struggle for autonomy from before the Roman Empire up through the dissolution of guarded national borders within the recent European Union. Throughout these centuries of rises and falls due to battles and rulers, one constant remains: Basque culture. Kurlansky portrays the Basque core as a Roman Catholic community of self-determined people whose unique Euskera language binds them together which keeps them distinct from their Spanish and French neighbors. Also, within the Basque core is their bond with the fertile land surrounding the Pyrenees mountains and the bountiful Bay of Biscay. Both sources kept them autonomous from the superimposed French-Spanish border within their lands. From my reading, one highlight for me was the account of the Tree of Guernica. It lived for 450 years and was the location of not only royal Spanish coronations but it also served as a site for legal declarations such as the original idea for the writ of habeas corpus. To commemorate this area, an annual spring festival in April is held to keep the ancient tree’s spirit at the center of Basque identity. Knowing this, the Nazi luftwaffe targeted the town of Guernica on its festival day of April 26, 1937 to demonstrate their power. Outraged at the devastation of innocents, Barcelona’s Pablo Picasso created his famous protest painting of the destruction which we saw recently in Madrid at the Reine Sophia Museum. Kurlansky captures the painful injustice of this air bomb attack in the context of Basque people’s noble struggle. Still today, they carry on. Overall, despite the book’s lengthy chronicles of battles won and lost, its spirit triumphs.

I have read two other books by Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. In both, the role of Basques in exploration and fishing were mentioned, and that got me interested in this book.

I had not known much about the Basques before reading the book. I knew the language, Euskara, has no real relatives. It seems to be a totally unique language dating back well into prehistoric times. I also would hear about Basques occasionally, particularly when the Basque separatist group, ETA, was in the news. Since I did not know a whole lot, that made the book really interesting.

The Basques were late adopters of Christianity, but once they became Christian, they did so with ardor. Through much of their history they were very strongly allied with the clergy, which in many ways had them allied with the monarchy in Spain. Often the monarchs would allow the Basques a certain degree of autonomy, and customs exemptions, that kept the Basques pretty happy and they would often rally to protect their homeland. Their support of the clergy made them pretty unhappy with the new constitutions Spain drafted in the 19th Century. Often the rural priests were some of the most fluent in the Basque language. Often times it seems like the Basques would not fit nicely into a leftist or rightist dichotomy politically.

The book also delves into the Spanish Civil War. This is a part of history that I'm pretty ignorant about. I really would like to read more about it, perhaps Homage to Catalonia and For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is really interesting how the most prosperous parts of Spain, Catalonia and the Basqueland, are also the areas that most strongly opposed Franco, and even in 2012, often would be happy to be rid of Spain.

Another thought that this book helped reinforce is the oddity the notion of Spain. For most of its history, there was no king or queen of Spain. Rather, the king was given the title king of Aragon and Castile and Leon instead of king of Spain. The idea of Spain as a monolithic country is a bit of a fallacy and the regional differences can still be seen today. This also came up recently in a Sports Illustrated article by Grant Wahl about FC Barcelona . This book really makes me want to learn about Spain.

I wanted to like this better, but one key missing element kept nagging at me the entire time I was reading: where are the women? You'd think that the deciding factor in defining Basque culture is having a penis. Seriously, there are a couple of asides about the role women have played in preserving Basque culture, but nothing of substance. Deeply disappointing. That said, I did learn a lot from this book about the history and language of Euskadi, and hope to learn more in the future.

Best treatment of Basque history out there. Mark Kurlansky's style is journalistic, easy to read and vivid.

one of my favorite books i have read many times, you can dip in and out wherever and just as satisfying sampling as reading cover to cover. kurlansky has a penchant for writing about history from one point and letting all of humankind swirl around that point in time and space. he did it with cod fish, with salt, with santo Domingo baseball, and with basques. it's such a wonderful country, in history, people, languages, food, beaches and mountains, dancing music art on and on that this serves well for a short and entertaining primer. has nice maps, pictures, bibliography and recipes too.

Quite succint but informative

Mark Kurlansky has made a niche for himself writing popular books about boring subjects (Salt, Cod). The books take the form of biographies - focusing on the subject as it exists in different, disconnected time and places - but since the "subjects" are objects, there's no internal development or psychological drama to be had. Here the subject has a bit more life, and one comes away with an appreciation for the proud, tough, and adventuresome Basques. Settling along the Atlantic corner of what is now northern Spain, the Basques exhibited classic tribal/clannish behavior- high in-group vs out-group favoritism, simple civilization, superstitious beliefs, aggression. They were also talented ship-builders, clever traders, and courageous explorers. They first circumnavigated the globe (the survivors of Magellan's expedition were mostly Basques), they were champion ocean fisherman (and may have chased whales as far as Newfoundland before Columbus's voyage), and they survived for millennia on difficult land as empires rose and fell around them. In the hands of a more talented writer, these could have made for gripping tales; here, one merely respects their daring at an intellectual level. Still, given that a typical American reader might have only heard of the Basques as an (often violent) separatist movement in Spain, the book does serve a purpose. The fiercely nationalistic, revanchist Basques seem an odd subject for the left-wing Kurlansky, who early on expresses his disdain for antiquated notions of nationhood. The Basque territory has in more recent times become more ethnically and culturally mixed (a development celebrated by Kurlansky, who claims that Basque identity is heterogeneous), and their grand days of accomplishment seem a part of the past, a loss balanced by the increasing peacefulness of the region.

Oso liluragarria!

I fell in love with Basque history and culture during a recent trip to St. Jean-de-Luz and San Sebastián (or should I say Donibane Lohitzune and Donostia). I knew almost nothing about this region before traveling there, though I had watched Ocho Apellidos Vascos in one of my college Spanish classes. From that movie I gleamed the Basques were a rough, loud group of people who had very long surnames, were proud of their culture, and occasionally committed terrorist acts to gain more independence (joking...sort of).

However, this book and my trip to the Basque region opened my eyes to the truly ancient, beautiful, and complex history of these people. They built and sailed Colombus's ships, they were the first to circumnavigate the globe (not Magellan, contrary to popular belief), they speak one of the oldest languages - if not THE oldest - in the world. They have survived through many tumultuous periods of history and will continue to do so for generations to come.

Highly recommend this book to anyone who will be traveling to Spain or anyone who simply wants to learn the history of one of the most fascinating and ancient nations in the world!

Fascinating history of both the Basques and Spain. I didn't realize that the Basque people were so influential in the history of the western world. The first person to circumnavigate the world, to find the grave of Saint James in Santiago, and maybe to reach North America--all Basques. These people with their unusual language and obscure origins lived in a political system closer to modern democracy than their neighbors ruled by monarchs.
Kurlansky tells their history through interesting stories and details about daily life--including food. Also gives you a history of modern Spain and an understanding of the Basque separatist movement.
Wish I had read this before hiking the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain, including much time in Basqueland.

I've given up on rating this book because I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. The Basque History of the World will serve those who want an introduction to Basque Culture well. It covers both Basque History and the Basque perspective and participation in World History. It is written with the best intentions, too, and this is easy to tell from Kurlansky's unprejudiced narration of a history that is hotly contested and told with too many biases by both Basques and Spaniards.

My first issue is that, well, Kurlansky can be a really boring writer. I slogged through the first section wondering what all of these chapters had to do with anything. Some of the chapters in this first section are referred to later, but I would've preferred the book to be more structured, so that I didn't have to get an idea of what the writer was attempting to achieve in the latter half of the book.

The second is that this book is seriously begging to be proofread. Names of locations, particularly, are constantly misspelled or spelled in different, contradictory ways. Either consolidate the names, or explain why you're spelling them differently every sentence. I really have to wonder what an unfamiliar reader will make of the explanation that Sabino Arana named the region 'Euzkadi' because z is a more Basque sound than s, only to spell it Euskadi consequently. (Not to mention that Euskadi is the official name now, rather than Euzkadi.) I have to object to the use of Basqueland throughout the book, which invokes the idea of a land of mythical creatures or possibly a theme park. The Greater Region of Basque Country, or Greater Region for short, or even Basque Speaking lands, are all more appropriate and to the point. Then there are the mistakes: I saw Hondarribia being spelled as Hondaribbia or Hondarribía, and its Spanish name Fuenterrabía as Fuenterabbía. These are only a couple examples of the many in the book.

The third issue is that, while I will disagree with reviewers who found this book to be "pro-terrorist propaganda" (really, though? and what would Kurlansky gain by writing "pro-terrorist propaganda," as an uninvolved American?), there are a couple of pages where I thought he portrayed victims as opportunists. I didn't think Kurlansky was spewing a "load of lies" or sharing propaganda, but it seemed to me that, in his effort to be unprejudiced about a delicate subject, his sympathy for his subjects briefly overtook him. Aside from said two pages, I found the book to make, as aforementioned, an effort to remain objective. This is all the more obvious by its treatment of the Basque Nationalist Party and their exploits, which Kurlansky characterizes as economically privileged with all that that entails, and silly at turns. See: the whole Guggenheim Museum section.

And anyway, it is hard to call a book ETA propaganda when only 4 of its 16 chapters devote any time to the terrorist group. The author is actually concerned about the idea that Basque has come to be synonymous with ETA, and the apparent goal of the book is to show the culture, cuisine and language that Basqueness is really about. Instead of closing with a screed about the evil Spaniards, Kurlansky shares scenes of a 'txarriboda', an occasion in which a rural community gathers to kill a pig, make sausages, chorizos and other pork products, eat them and share jokes in Basque and Spanish both. I guess you could argue that the murder of a pig is symbolic, but then you'd probably be the reason why I choose to read books about Spanish History by foreign historians, rather than homegrown ones.

And, on that note, if Kurlansky's writing didn't impress you and you wish to read of the whole of Spain rather than the Basques, then I recommend Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past by Giles Tremlett. While also a light read rather than academic writing, it should satisfy those cursorily intrigued by the country.

Overall I enjoyed the book, although it's written for a mainstream audience so it's not nearly as nuanced as I hoped it would be. Especially regarding the parts relating to the Spanish civil war. I wish it spoke about the basque carlists that fought on the nationalist side a little bit.

Rarely do I not finish a book and Kurlansky's Basque History of the World falls into that less-than-stellar category.

I know nothing about Basque history and I thought that this would be a good introduction. Instead, I found it very disjointed and schizophrenic. I've heard good things about Kurlansky, so this book was an even bigger disappointment. I read 100 pages and remember almost nothing, which is very out of the ordinary for me and I'm going to go ahead and blame it on the format and writing of the book.

I hate giving books three stars, never mind only one. I only do it now because I feel that this book deserves it. Harsh, I know, but I will pick up Cod in the near future, as I hear it's supposed to be his best work and I'll give him another chance. But, to be honest, this was a horrible book with which to introduce myself to Kurlansky.