Salt : A World History

Mr. Our land my is a neck of a writer. The Herculean research for this topic shows through in chapter after chapter. This was a very interesting book and I highly recommend it to anyone that eats and travels.

This was a fun read, with a lot of trivia surrounding the history of salt. It is structured chronologically, and so starts from ancient Egypt and China and comes to the modern day. I found the history and lore surrounding salt to be quite interesting, and offers a few glimpses at past cultures (and to a certain degree, today's cultures). I personally did not like the recipes using salt that were inserted into the text, but I suppose some people might want to try ancient recipes (or the more modern ones). I also wish it had been a little more clear when covering some Biblical events that the events may or may not have happened (such as the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, which most historians do not consider to have happened as described in the Bible), though this is a relatively minor complaint since the book is not mostly about this, it just references them. While the book didn't feel too long, it certainly was not short, but I enjoyed the breadth of topics covered, mostly focusing on Europe, the US, China, and the ancient world in general (mostly Europe, Africa and Asia for this). If you'd like some light history, and a lot of information about salt (mostly history, but some of the science of it is explored when we come to the modern history of salt), this is a fun, nice read. You'll learn just how important salt once was, and how important salt has been for human civilization.

Yes, this book is as good as the reviews claim it is. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm so deeply engrossed, I am confident my 5 star review will hold until the end. I was most attracted to this book when I read in the book's description that salt is the only rock humans eat. I was expecting perhaps a book with pieces of trivia and assorted facts, but discovered this was more of a book on world history. The scope of this book goes well beyond salt, and its many uses. I found myself highlighting passage after passage of details I wanted to learn more about. It was to easy to get sidetracked looking up other historical facts while reading this book on my Kindle. For example, I spent hours reading about the ancient Chinese bamboo natural gas pipes. The book is full of interesting chapters on different cultures and traditions and the author found a way to tie everthjng together with a simple chloride. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning new and unusual facts about history. The writing style of this book is almost conversational. I sometimes felt as if I were listening to a fascinating lecture. I highly recommend.

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.

With so many other reviews I will keep this short......Who in the world could make such a dry subject so interesting, entertaining and informative? Only Mark Kurlansky. Kurlansky has a natural, easy and fluid flow to his words that make him a joy to read. This work spans the years from the very first know salt works to the modern day efforts of Leslie and Morton. He spends a lot of time with the makers of Tabasco on Avery Island La. because that story is so darn interesting-and the product is familiar to us all. It turns out that the hot sauce maker is co-located with an underground pillar of salt that might be 40,000 feet deep. And don't let me get started on the complexities of Chinese cooking, not to say the inventiveness of Chinese salt manufacturers. This is an excellent story from a top flight writer.

I like learning the history of the world via Kurlansky’s books. It’s a good way to learn economics and political power through the ages. It is fascinating to find our about the diverse harvested salt products over the millennia. Especially products with additional chemical salts that people came to prefer. I enjoyed learning all the words that came from salt, e.g., salary, salad. And the making of fish sauce with salt and fish innards by Romans and Chinese is so interesting. And those elaborate aristocratic salt cellers for the fancy table! I especially liked the way he told the Gandhi story. I was not aware of all the bad British laws about disallowing Indian citizens from scraping salt. At last I found out what those compartmentalized ponds are in San Francisco Bay that I have seen many times from the air! Salt ponds. This book genre is commodity history, also called “microhistory,” Throughout the book I though about the high solubility of salt in water, and how it can dissolve in humid air and clump in a salt shaker. When I lived in the humid Midwest we always put rice grains in our salt shaker so it would pour. Manufacturers add anti-caking agents to table salt, as well as an iodine salt. I believe the author sometimes stretches the truth so I find myself taking his word with a grain of salt. Ha ha. For example, he has attributed many historical events to salt economics, such as building of the Erie Canal, while likely there were other circumstances involved. What do academic historians say about his books? I got bogged down visiting individual European countries and hearing about how they salted fish. It seems to go on for too many pages.

I am a qualified Nutritionist and Naturopath and I appreciate reading books that are rich in meaningful information. I bought this book because I had increasingly noted that the concerns we have about table salt are unfounded. So I decided to do some research. To get a good handle on salt, I needed to go back in time (hence this book) to understand the use of salt throughout history, and then relate that to more recent studies that were conducted. There were as many studies claiming salts benefits and there are many claiming salt is bad. So that did not give me any confidence that everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet. Whenever I see conflicting study outcomes, I immediately look to see whether we are comparing apples with apples, and we were not. You see, there are actually 3 types of salt and one is very good and two are not so good. Most studies did not even point this out, or realised that we humans eat three very different types of salt. So let me try to make sense of this: I have certainly come to the conclusion that many others have already come to, that the benefits of eating generous amounts of the right salt to suit one’s taste is justified, and much better than being paranoid and limiting my intake. But we need to choose the right salt. What I did learn was that ocean salt is about 85% Sodium Chloride and the remaining 15% is this wonderful suite of over 84 minerals. The thing is, the salt processors remove the 15% part which is the really valuable portion, and sell it as Magnesium Oil. Once you understand that there are three types of salt (1) pure ocean salt (2) ocean salt with the 15% minerals removed and (3) tables salt being pure sodium chloride plus added free-flowing additives and iodine, then it all become very clear. If you eat the pure 100% sea salt you can have as much as you like (of course being sensible) whilst the others (#2 & 3) should be restricted. The 'bottom line' is that many people are not getting enough salt which causes dehydration, and this insufficiency of water in the human body has all sort of consequences such as thicker blood (ie blood with high viscosity) and reduced metabolic function caused by low body fluid levels. This can have all sorts of consequences such as fatigue, increased colds and flu's, and hundreds of other ailments as the body struggles to move fluid around efficiently. The old line that salt is high in sodium and sodium increases blood pressure is a very simplistic explanation and one wonders how the population was ever duped into believing it. Years ago before we had refrigeration we would store our meats in barrels of salt and we ended up consuming a lot of salt. Whilst not suggesting we go back to those times, I would suggest that for most healthy people that 5-8 grams of salt per day for an adult is fine and will not increase blood pressure. Only those on salt-restricted diets need to concerned about limiting salt. I have written a short paper about Salt and Magnesium Oil and some readers may like to download it to help understand the benefits of salt. You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4XGKNybHkRkb1lZT2N3VTgyXzQ&usp=sharing

Good condition, as described and as expected.

This was a great book that led me down a wormhole of food history books.

Had no idee salt could be so intresting

This book is like a very long article on salt. The history is overwhelming. I've been looking for a reference book like that and I don't know how I missed it. Arrived on time. I enjoy reading it. It's a book for general readers, don't have to be an academic to understand.

You want to read about salt? Wrong book. You want to read about how salt affected civilisations? You've come to the right place. A great in-depth read and analysis of human civilisation; empires grew and empires declined because of salt.

Very informative and a great read!