Salt: A World History

Customer Reviews

Salt as focus of world history

The book tells the story of salt throughout world history: how it was made, how it was traded, how it was used, and the effect the salt industry has had on villages, cities, and regions.

The book starts and ends in China, first describing the brine wells and the advanced drilling techniques the Chinese invented centuries ago. The text then moves to how salt was used in Roman times describing a sauce called garum made from pickled and fermented fish parts. Kurlansky then continues with Mediteranean fish industry. Salt's main use was in preserving fish. The next big change came when cod was found off the coast of Newfoundland. Cod's low fat meant more salt was needed.

Eventually, the American colonies developed their own salt and cod industries. Kurlansky describes the importance of salt in the American Civil War, how salt works led to the marketing of Tabasco sauce, how canals were dug through New York state to take salt from the Great Lakes to the coast.

After a quick recounting of how salt was used by Ghandi to spark India's revolution, the book ends back in China and how the salt industry there has moved into the modern age. The old traditional derricks are gone; no one wanted to pay to preserve even the most important ones as historical landmarks.

Kurlanski gives a good outline of how salt was taxed in various parts of the world. His description of how the salt tax was an important factor in both the French and Indian revolutions deserves special mention.

As he describes how salt was traded and produced, Kurlanky peppers his narrative (sorry...) with short recipes that illustrate how salt was used in different parts of the world and at different times of our history.

If you love food and history, you'll love this book. If you love one and only moderately like the other, you'll find the book bogs down a bit.

Salt of the Earth---Chemical Heritage magazine

Salt is a multidisciplinary historical look at salt, a material closely tied to civilization. As its title claims, it is a history of the world from the perspective of salt. The book is hard to put down with attention grabbing chapters such as 'Salt's Salad Days,' 'The Leaving of Liverpool,' 'The Odium of Sodium,' 'Big salt, Little Salt' and 'The War Between the Salts.' Since the author has received an award for excellence in food writing, it should come as no surprise that the text contains its share of historical recipes.
In the course of the book we are introduced to an astonishing range of cultures and visit many areas where salt has been found and harvested. From Egypt to China, Rome and the Celts, India, Africa and America, the story moves back and forth, skipping between time periods and cultures. The reader is assisted in the journey by well-drawn maps. I especially enjoyed learning about the many ways salt has been harvested, from the sea, evaporating brines or mining rock salt. I also was intrigued by the influence of salt on fields diverse as economics, taxes, politics and technology. For example, we learn about how Gandhi and Indian independence got its start in rebellion against oppressive salt taxes leveled on the Indians so that British salt makers would have a market for their surplus salt.
In the book we meet salt-connected people like Li Bing, governor of what is now Sichuan in 250 B.C.E. and a hydraulic engineering genius. Besides building the world's first large scale dam for flood control and irrigation, and opening up central China for widespread agriculture, Li Bing was the first to drill for salt brine. The author shows how this naturally led to our geologic understanding of salt domes and eventually how to drill for oil in such domes. At this time the Chinese became the first to tax salt and attempt to fix its price, something hard to do with such a cheap and readily available material.
It is in his slant towards food that the author is most comfortable, talking about the many ways salt and food intersect. We and introduced to salt and food preservation, spices and flavorings, sour kraut and salted meat, fish and fishing, even the harvesting and production of caviar. There are two chapters on Avery Island in Louisiana, the first on salt mining by the Avery family which supplied much of the Confederacy's salt, the second on Edmund McIlhenny combining two products of the island ' hot chili peppers and salt ' to make Tabasco sauce.
The book appears to randomly skip around between cultures and time periods, visiting China and America several times. It also ignores any time period later than mid twentieth century and does little with modern, nonfood uses of salt. The author gives no citations or footnotes for his many quotes or facts, relying instead on a fairly extensive bibliography including books and a few articles. While he talks about the science of salt in parts of a few chapters, I would have liked to learn more. He does fairly well with the changes in technology involved with salt. While I enjoyed reading the book it left me with many historical and scientific questions unanswered. Its real strength is in describing the historical relationship between salt and food. I found it pleasant to read.

A gem of a book

This is a gem of a book. It discusses and intertwines the history and importance of salt from prehistoric times until now in the context of the various types of salt, preserving and brining meat, fish and other foods, cooking, cheese making, health, geology, geography, place names, world trade, world history, warfare, art and investments, to name a few topics.

The descriptions of the role of salt in the American Civil War and the Caribbean islands were fascinating. Then there were the Romans, the Mayans, The Aztecs, the Chinese, the French, the Germans, the English, the Dutch, the Russians, the Scandinavians and others and their involvement with salt.

The recipes for cooking with salt are aptly chosen from about 4000 years of recorded history and are remarkably similar to those in use today. The colorful view and history of the San Francisco salt ponds from an airplane were always a bit of mystery to me, but no longer. The origin of towns and cities whose name ends in "wich" was enlightening, to say nothing of Salzburg and the many salt mines in the world.

In short, this book is a grand, well-written, informative and often amusing world panorama of salt filled with a host of pearls of learning. It is hard to put down and makes 449 pages pleasantly fly by, leaving you with a taste for more. If you have ever used salt, you really should read this book.