Sep 10, 2019
Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!
Today’s book is Cod: A
Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, by Mark Kurlansky.
"Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the
Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the
Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America
recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod, frozen and dried in the
frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What
was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the
Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of
cod. As we make our way through the centuries of cod history, we
also find a delicious legacy of recipes, and the tragic story of
environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once their
numbers were legendary. In this lovely, thoughtful history, Mark
Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that changed the world
forever changed by the world's folly?"
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