NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | THE BOOK BEHIND THE VIRAL TIKTOKOne tiny rock. One epic history.**"A must-have for any serious cook or foodie."—Anthony Bourdain"This is a "wow!" book: roving, startling, engaging.” —Washington Post“Kurlansky finds the world in a grain of salt.”—New York Times Book ReviewAn unlikely world history from the bestselling author of Milk! and Cod**...

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic, and culinary story of milk and all things dairy--with recipes throughout.According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated...

**JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER | BY THE AUTHOR OF THE VIRAL TIKTOK BOOK SALTFrom the author of the New York Times bestseller Salt, an unexpected, energetic look at world history via the humble cod fish"In [Kurlansky’s] hands, the cod proves intriguing… a hero of history… emblematic of a great crisis in the relation of people to nature."—New York Times**Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets ...

**"A lively, anecdotal, all-encompassing history of Basque ingenuity and achievement." —Atlantic MonthlyFrom Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod, Salt, Birdseye, and Paper—the illuminating story of an ancient and enigmatic people**Straddling a small corner of Spain and France in a land that is marked on no maps except their own, the Basques are a puzzling contradiction—they are Europe's oldest nation without ever having...

“Engrossing”—Wall Street JournalHow do good people find the courage to resist and end the greatest evil in their country? An untold story of the Civil War Era: pacifists in Boston who led the fight to end slavery without violence and war.Has there ever been good violence or a good war? The American Civil War is likely considered to be so since there seemed to be no alternative. Or was there? Before the war, Bostonian abolitionist W...

"Reaches back 500 years to track the city's evolving history . . . political, social, musical, culinary." — New York Times , "Summer's Best Travel Books"New York Times–bestselling and award-winning author Mark Kurlansky presents an insider's view of Havana: the elegant, tattered city he has come to know over more than thirty years. Part cultural history, part travelogue, with recipes, historic engravings, photogra...

From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Cod and Salt, a new global history of the mysterious, misunderstood, globally beloved crustacean.When Mark Kurlansky was 17, he got his first job as a commercial fisherman in the Atlantic on a 45-foot, wooden-hulled, two-man lobster boat, thus igniting a lifelong fascination and kinship with the mysterious creature. Since that defining experience, the lobster's role in cuisine a...

"Henry David Thoreau wrote, 'Who hears the fishes when they cry?' Maybe we need to go down to the river bank and try to listen."In what he says is the most important piece of environmental writing in his long and award-winning career, Mark Kurlansky, best-selling author of Salt and Cod, The Big Oyster, 1968, and Milk, among many others, employs his signature multi-century storytelling and compelling attention to detail to chronicle the harrowing ...

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, p...

From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Cod and Salt, a new global history of the mysterious, misunderstood, globally beloved crustacean.When Mark Kurlansky was 17, he got his first job as a commercial fisherman in the Atlantic on a 45-foot, wooden-hulled, two-man lobster boat, thus igniting a lifelong fascination and kinship with the mysterious creature. Since that defining experience, the lobster’s role in cuisine a...

An extraordinary look at an ordinary substance—and one we'd be dead without: salt.Salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and the story of this common household seasoning proves a fascinating one. In a kaleidoscope of history, Mark Kurlansky—bestselling author of  1968 and Cod—blends economic, scientific political, religious, and culinary elements to produce this tasty account of salt, the only rock we humans eat. Populated by colorf...

Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled.For centuries New York was famous for its oysters, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalve...