National Outdoor Book Award Winner for Outdoor Literature**From the award-winning, bestselling author of Cod—the irresistible story of the science, history, art, and culture of the least efficient way to catch a fish.Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish—and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets—salmon, trout, and char; and for some, bass, tarpon, tuna, bonefish, and e...

The author of Cod and The Basque History of the World takes an extraordinary look at an ordinary substance—salt, the only rock humans eat—and how it has shaped civilization from the very beginning. Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of history, a multi-layered masterpiece that blends economic, scientific, political, religious, and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale.

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...

**“Kurlansky finds the world in a grain of salt.” - New York Times Book ReviewAn unlikely world history from the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World**Best-selling author Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of hum...

**"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...

The cod has played a vital part in livelihoods, diets, and health in general—as well as roles in national economies and international wars. Drawing on his love of food and food culture, Mark Kurlansky leaps into history and folklore to explore how this innocuous fish had such an impact over the centuries. Kurlansky recounts how the cod spurred interest in the development of North America and caused a whole nation of people to jump into fishing and ocean exploration. In addition to providin...

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...

"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...

Break out the TV dinners! From the author who gave us Cod, Salt, and other informative bestsellers, the first biography of Clarence Birdseye, the eccentric genius inventor whose fast-freezing process revolutionized the food industry and American agriculture.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Salt examines the intersections between his life and Ernest Hemingway's in this mix of travel memoir and history.By a series of coincidences, Mark Kurlansky's life has always been intertwined with Ernest Hemingway's legend, starting with being in Idaho the day of Hemingway's death. The Importance of Not Being Ernest explores the intersections between Hemingway's and Kurlansky's lives, resulting in c...

The Basques are Europe's oldest people, their origins a mystery, their language related to no other on Earth, and even though few in population and from a remote and rugged corner of Spain and France, they have had a profound impact on the world. Whilst inward-looking, preserving their ancient language and customs, the Basques also struck out for new horizons, pioneers of whaling and cod fishing, leading the way in exploration of the Americas and Asia, were among the first capitalists and ...

**“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 TimesAn 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...