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Cod : a biography of the fish that changed the world / Mark Kurlansky.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York : Penguin Books, 1998.Description: viii, 294 p. : ill. ; 18 cmISBN:
  • 0140275010 (pbk)
  • 9780140275018 (pbk)
Subject(s):
Contents:
ch. 1. Race to Codlandia -- ch. 2. With mouth wide open -- ch. 3. Cod rush -- ch. 4. 1620: the rock and the cod -- ch. 5. Certain inalienable rights -- ch. 6. Cod war heard 'round the world -- ch. 7. Few new ideas versus nine million eggs -- ch. 8. Last two ideas -- ch. 9. Iceland discovers the finite universe -- ch. 10. Three wars to close the open sea -- ch. 11. Requiem for the Grand Banks -- ch. 12. Dangerous waters of nature's resilience -- ch. 13. Bracing for the Spanish Armada -- ch. 14. Bracing for the Canadian Armada -- Cook's tale: six centuries of cod recipes.
Summary: Cod spans a thousand years and four continents. From the Vikings, who pursued the codfish across the Atlantic, and the enigmatic Basques, who first commercialized it in medieval times, to Bartholomew Gosnold, who named Cape Cod in 1602, and Clarence Birdseye, who founded an industry on frozen cod in the 1930s, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs, and of course the fishermen, whose lives have interwoven with this prolific fish. He chronicles the fifteenth-century politics of the Hanseatic League and the cod wars of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. He embellishes his story with gastronomic detail, blending in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages to the present. And he brings to life the cod itself: its personality, habits, extended family, and ultimately the tragedy of how the most profitable fish in history is today faced with extinction. From fishing ports in New England and Newfoundland to coastal skiffs, schooners, and factory ships across the Atlantic; from Iceland and Scandinavia to the coasts of England, Brazil, and West Africa, Mark Kurlansky tells a story that brings world history and human passions into captivating focus. The codfish. Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious than gold. Indeed, the codfish has played a fascinating and crucial role in world history.
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Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 333.9566 K96 Available 33111006735894
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"A charming fish tale and a pretty gift for your favorite seafood cook or fishing monomaniac. But in the last analysis, it's a bitter ecological fable for our time." - Los Angeles Times

An unexpected, energetic look at world history via the humble cod fish from the bestselling author of Salt and The Basque History of the World

Cod is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character. 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?

"Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish." -David McCullough

First published: Walker and Co., c1997.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-282) and index.

ch. 1. Race to Codlandia -- ch. 2. With mouth wide open -- ch. 3. Cod rush -- ch. 4. 1620: the rock and the cod -- ch. 5. Certain inalienable rights -- ch. 6. Cod war heard 'round the world -- ch. 7. Few new ideas versus nine million eggs -- ch. 8. Last two ideas -- ch. 9. Iceland discovers the finite universe -- ch. 10. Three wars to close the open sea -- ch. 11. Requiem for the Grand Banks -- ch. 12. Dangerous waters of nature's resilience -- ch. 13. Bracing for the Spanish Armada -- ch. 14. Bracing for the Canadian Armada -- Cook's tale: six centuries of cod recipes.

Cod spans a thousand years and four continents. From the Vikings, who pursued the codfish across the Atlantic, and the enigmatic Basques, who first commercialized it in medieval times, to Bartholomew Gosnold, who named Cape Cod in 1602, and Clarence Birdseye, who founded an industry on frozen cod in the 1930s, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs, and of course the fishermen, whose lives have interwoven with this prolific fish. He chronicles the fifteenth-century politics of the Hanseatic League and the cod wars of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. He embellishes his story with gastronomic detail, blending in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages to the present. And he brings to life the cod itself: its personality, habits, extended family, and ultimately the tragedy of how the most profitable fish in history is today faced with extinction. From fishing ports in New England and Newfoundland to coastal skiffs, schooners, and factory ships across the Atlantic; from Iceland and Scandinavia to the coasts of England, Brazil, and West Africa, Mark Kurlansky tells a story that brings world history and human passions into captivating focus. The codfish. Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious than gold. Indeed, the codfish has played a fascinating and crucial role in world history.

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