Cod: A Biography Of The Fish That Changed The World (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
Those who argue that economic exploitation of natural "resources" can go on for ever because it always has gone on, should read Mark Kurlansky's book "Cod, A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World". The book is not primarily about the collapse of stocks in the early 1990s but rather a fascinating investigation of all aspects of this fish - cultural, economic and political - without which the American Revolution might never have taken place or at least have been delayed many decades.How so? You may ask. Simply put, it was cod that turned the struggling, half-starving settlers in the New England colonies of into an international commercial power. The colonists took poor quality salted cod, the cod that could not be solt in Europe, to the slave islands of the Caribbean where the high-protein food was fed to the African slaves. for the return, the ships loaded with molasses from which rum was produced back in New England. "The West Indies presented a growing market for the rejects, for anything that was cheap. In fact, West India was the commercial name for the lowest-quality salt cold," write Mark Kurlansky.In addition, though New England ships were not slave carriers they did supply salt cod to slave merchants who used the fish to buy slaves. At the time when New Englanders were increasingly preoccupied with "freedom", they were noticeably selective about whose freedom they were championing. "The French politician Alexis de Tocqueville, in his 1835 study...wrote about an inherent contradiction in the New England character....New England was the great champion of individual liberty and even openly denouncing slavery, all the while growing ever more affluent by providing Caribbean planters with barrels of cheap food to keep enslaved people working 16 hours a day. By the first decade of the eighteenth centruy, more than 300 ships left Boston in a good year for the West Indies."The great danger with single subject books, such as this one, is that - as the little girl observed, "This book tells me more about dolphins than I wanted to know." Fortunately Kurlansky avoids this pitfall. The book is a great mixture of history, recipes, curious trivia and useful analysis. A good read for anyone curious about this fish that was once cheap and ubiquitous but which, despite warnings for decades about overshishing, is now next to impossible to obtain. What does this tell us about the future of global commercial fish stocks which, according to the UN's FAO are 60% fully exploited, overexploited or depleted. And the situation has only deteriorated in the last decade.For more reviews and other writings, please visist my website:Serendipities of a Writer's Life www.dennisonberwick.info
Rating: 3.75* of fiveVictorian scientists said that cod was the fish in the miracle of the loaves and fishes because there were so darn many of them....Yeah, late to the party yet again...13 years late. I read this book, I would swear, when it came out; I recognized a few of the anecdotes, and I remember the jacket design very clearly. But a lot had slipped from my memory, and I now wonder if I actually read it, or had enough conversations about it to think I had.Well, whatever, if it was a re-read it was a fun one. I like Kurlansky's informative-yet-chatty style, and I love the angle of view in the book...what's cod done for us as a species? So what? What's cod made possible in the world? The rise of an independent America. The agrarian horrors of African chattel slavery. The Industrial Revolution. Little stuff like that was built on the white-fleshed back of a formerly abundant fish.I like cod. Salted, dried, fresh-frozen, the tongues, the cheeks...it's all good, as my daughter's generation says with monotonous regularity (and questionable factual basis). I never once thought about Cod, the deliverer from hunger, until the Cod Wars of the early 1970s. I remember the world reaction to Iceland going to a 200-mile fishing limit with a teenager's detached bemusement: "So? Little teeny place like that, let 'em have it, big whoop." For rhetorical effect, let's assume I was sitting in front of the TV eating Gorton's fish sticks at the time I said this, though I spent little time with the TV and less eating fish sticks as a kid.It caused such trouble because of cod's enormous significance even now as an agribusiness output. Iceland's post-colonial economy was built on cod; Canada's Maritime provinces relied on it in those days (and on unemployment payments from the rest of Canada now that cod's commercially extinct); Norway and the UK want all there is to have so their fisheries industries don't wither away and leave them hungry as well as sailor-less.Kurlansky wrote a very enjoyable read about a very important food-source and industrial product. I recommend it to anyone even marginally interested in the world around them, to science browsers, and to policy wonks of a scientific bent. You won't regret it.
What do You think about Cod: A Biography Of The Fish That Changed The World (1999)?
Great book! I wondered if I would like it , but I was surprised to really enjoy it. Kurlansky does a great and fascinating job in telling the story of Atlantic Cod fishing over the past 1000 years, tying it to world history and politics in general. It definitely make me worried about over-fishing and has made me reconsider my fish-eating unless I can be assured that the fish I ate were either farmed or fished in sustainable conditions-- I think a difficult task! As a Portuguese gal now living near Cape Cod, was great to read about this fish that is a mainstay of the Azorean diet & which used to be central to the Massachusetts economy. Sad bottom line: our Atlantic cod is disappearing due to political mismanagement & overfishing.
—Ana
This was a lovely little book all about the history of the cod fish and the people who ultimately contributed to its demise. I really enjoy reading historical non-fiction and Kurlansky's prose makes reading this book a joy. I learned more than I ever thought that I could know about cod and how this one fish was one of the most important trading items in history. At one time, man never thought that he could cut down all of the trees. Look what happened in Eastern Europe. It was almost completely deforested in just a few hundred years. This same thing happened to many places in the US as well. People once thought that you could walk across the Atlantic from England to the US Northeast coast because there were so many cod. Today, you're lucky if you find a school of 15,000 fish. This is just one species sure to be a voice for others. The book is also nicely inter laden with many historical recipes for cod, some dating back to the 1300's through the present. I loved this book and look forward to checking out more of the author's work.
—Melissa
My friend Michael Strening, Jr, in addition to being an awesome musician, is teaching middle school social studies this year and he told us about a book that his class was reading—Cod by Mark Kurlansky. His description, that the book was an examination of the last thousand years or so of North Atlantic history through the lens of the titular fish, was really intriguing. Especially since I've just finished listening to the BBC's podcast of A History of the World in 100 Objects, which similarly examines history through things and what they can tell us about particular peoples and times.Cod didn't disappoint—there's the history of cod fishing itself, and then ways that that fishing interacted with other historical movements. For example, the notion that the American Revolution, for all its lofty philosophical ideals, was likely sparked by the financial independence the colonies had already achieved, fueled largely by the cod trade out of Boston. There's quite a bit about the modern state of cod fishing and the decline of cod populations due to overfishing. And sprinkled throughout are recipes for cod that really make me want to try some salt cod.
—Fuzzy Gerdes
