Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Salt: A World History
Book Review: Spice of Life
Summary: 4 Stars
I was really looking forward to this book, and overall I really liked it. Amazing research and great historical facts. Kurlansky sounds like he had a great time traveling the world for this book's research. What a great job! My only complaint is similar to what the other readers have mentioned--it was pretty lengthy and covered such a large span of history. Then again, salt has been around since the beginning...Salt is something that we take for granted now, but in the past it was so precious it was actually used as a currency. Whomever had the salt had the power.
Some of the most interesting parts of the book were when the preservation powers of salt were mentioned: The ancient Celts that were found in Hellein, Austria hundreds of years later in the underground salt mine, preserved down to their brightly-colored kilts!
My other favorite part was Chapter 22, about the Dead Sea. I really enjoyed reading about this because I was there in 2000 and was amazed and mystified by the awesome lake, and the areas surrounding it. Unfortunately, the Dead Sea is evaporating at such a rapid rate that geologists are predicting that it may not be around in thirty years, and may even dry up before then. I am glad I was able to see this natural wonder before it was too late.
Kurlansky's writing style was great, and I am looking forward to reading his other books... one of them is on my shelf, and this book served as the impetus to pick that one up very soon!
Book Review: Take this book with a grain of . . . . .
Summary: 3 Stars
The history of a mineral...from ancient times to modern. This ought to be a boring book, right? But it isn't. The reason _Salt_ has received many poor reviews is not because it's boring. It's because it's full of mistakes.To give this book 3 stars is charitable, but I DID enjoy large portions of the text and I learned some fascinating things. _Salt_ is a great starting point for research. If you read the book, you will almost certainly find interesting facts that you did not know before. However, before you quote these facts or commit yourself to them in print, be SURE to double check them in qualified sources, because, as other readers have noted, this book is riddled with errors.
To identify and discuss all these errors would probably require a book the size of _Salt_. I'll cite one good example here. Kurlansky criticizes Marco Polo for not mentioning the Chinese practice of minting paper money. It just so happened that I was reading Marco Polo alongside _Salt_, and Polo does in fact discuss Chinese paper money at length! Kurlansky's claim is simply not true. To further confuse matters, Kurlansky makes the claim after a list and discussion of legitimate Polo omissions. But he caps this discussion with the claim that Polo doesn't mention paper money, which is patently false. Polo more than mentions it. He mentions which towns use it and which towns don't and talks about it on and off for chapters.
So what is going on? To be fair, there are various manuscripts of Marco Polo's in existence, and I have only read one. Scholars believe that some of them were enlarged upon by the monks who copied them. Does Kurlansky perhaps have reason to believe that the "truest" version of Polo does not mention the paper money? If so, his decision to leave out this fact was at best presumptuous. At the least, he should have mentioned that only some manuscripts neglect the money. Instead, he made himself look a fool-as though he just didn't bother to read the book he cited.
Anyway, this is an example of the kind of thing he does over and over again. If you actually know something about the subject, you find he's not shooting straight. To be fair, many of these errors seem to occur when he's wandering off on a tangent. When he's sticking to his subject, he seems to hit nearer the mark. Still, his facts ought always to be double-checked. If you have the time and are sufficiently interested, read the book and double check anything you wish to cite. If you don't have lots of extra time, find another source.
Book Review: Taking a love of Salt to its logical extreme
Summary: 3 Stars
Salt is one of those things that turned up all over the place in my high school studies. It turned up in chemisty (sodium chloride), in biology (the amount of salt in our bodies and what we do with it), in history and English (check out the root of the word: "salary"). So sure, salt's important. But does it merit its own entire book about its history? Turns out the answer is both yes and no...I like these small, focused histories (as you've probably guessed if you've read any of the other reviews I've written). I've read many of them, including another one by Mark Kurlansky, Cod (which I rather enjoyed). So when I ran across Salt, I was certain I wanted to read it. I liked Kurlansky's style, and I already knew that the subject matter would be interesting.
And it was. In Salt, Kurlansky walks through both the history of salt and the influence of salt on history, presenting a wide and varied picture of one of the [now] most common elements in our modern world. And he does this in the same engaging fashion that he used in Cod; although, with fewer recipes. So why not give it five stars? Well, it has a couple of noticable flaws that tended to detract a bit from the overall presentation.
The first flaw was in the sheer number of historical snippets that were included. While I'm certain that salt has been important in the broad span of human history, there are a number of these historical anecdotes where he was clearly reaching to demonstrate the influence of salt. Salt may have been involved in these incidents, but it was peripheral at best, and the overall tone sounds too much like cheerleading. Cutting a few of these out would have shortened the book without detracting from the presentation at all.
The second flaw was the meandering path that he takes through the history of salt. He generally starts early in history, and his discussion moves along roughly as history does as well; however, he has a tendency to wander a bit both forward and backward without effectively tying all of this together. I'd have preferred to either walk straight through history while skipping around the world (effectively comparing the use and influence of salt around the world) or to have taken more time to discuss why we were rewinding (effectively following one thread to its conclusion and then picking up another parallel one). To me it made the presentation a little too choppy.
There have been other criticisms as well; for example, the chemistry is incorrect in a number of places, but if you're using this as a chemical reference, then you've got serious issues with your ability to library research. Of course, that begs the question of what errors are in there that we didn't catch. And it does tend to be a bit repetitive in parts; although, this could have been used to good effect if historical threads had been followed a bit more completely.
While I had a few dings on the book, overall I liked it. The fact that I read it end-to-end and enjoyed the last chapter as much as the first is a testament to my general enjoyment of it. It wasn't the best book I read last year, but I'll certainly keep it on my bookshelf. So, back to my original question: does salt merit its own book? Yes, it does, but perhaps in a somewhat shorter form.
Book Review: Tedious, but still interesting
Summary: 3 Stars
The historical, political and social aspects are interesting and, at times, make you say, "Wow, I didn't know that."
The detailed descriptions of how various civilizations made salt (only about 4-5 different ways)should be skipped after the first episode and the recipes ignored altogether.
All and all, probably worth the time
Book Review: The History of Humankind explained with a pintch of Salt
Summary: 5 Stars
In this book Mark Kurlansky merges the best of his historian and researcher facets with an outstanding ability for food writing. I read the history of Codfish and lately his book on Oysters. They all share a common feature: they are all outstanding and they all are able to amuse you while you learn about the world that surrounds you and the role salt played shaping history through people's need for salt.