Books by Mark Kurlansky

Wars have been fought over salt and, while salt taxes secured empires across Europe and Asia, they have also inspired revolution - Gandhi's salt march in 1930 began the overthrow of British rule in India.

'Who would ever think that a book on cod would make a compulsive read? In a story that brings world history and human passions into captivating focus, he shows how the most profitable fish in history is today faced with extinction.

National Outdoor Book Award Winner for Outdoor LiteratureFrom 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 even marlin--are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky learns, is that fly fishing makes catching a fish as difficult as possible. There is an art, too, in the crafting of flies. Beautiful and intricate, some are made with more than two dozen pieces of feather and fur from a wide range of animals. The cast as well is a matter of grace and rhythm, with different casts and rods yielding varying results.Kurlansky is known for his deep dives into the history of specific subjects, from cod to oysters to salt. But he spent his boyhood days on the shore of a shallow pond. Here, where tiny fish weaved under a rocky waterfall, he first tied string to a branch, dangled a worm into the water, and unleashed his passion for fishing. Since then, a lifelong love of the sport has led him around the world to many countries, coasts, and rivers-from the wilds of Alaska to Basque country, from the Catskills in New York to Oregon's Columbia River, from Ireland and Norway to Russia and Japan. And, in true Kurlansky fashion, he absorbed every fact, detail, and anecdote along the way.The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing marries Kurlansky's signature wide-ranging reach with a subject that has captivated him for a lifetime--combining history, craft, and personal memoir to show readers, devotees of the sport or not, the necessity of experiencing nature's balm first-hand.

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.

The internationally bestselling author says if we can save the salmon, we can save the world

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 throughoutWhile mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago. Today, milk is a test case in the most pressing issues in food politics, from industrial farming and animal rights to GMOs, the locavore movement and advocates for raw milk, who controversially reject pasteurisation. Profoundly intertwined with human civilisation, milk has a compelling and surprisingly global story to tell, and historian Mark Kurlansky is the perfect person to tell it. Tracing the liquid's diverse history from antiquity to the present, he details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics.

From the 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.

When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626 he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, nearby Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in New York, he could not conceal his eagerness to find and experience the fabled oyster cellars of New York City's slums.

The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare.

It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels outside his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighbourhood.

The White man in the Tree is a comedy of cultural misunderstanding set in the Caribbean, New York and Paris, a novella and eight stories about people who, because of their differences - between men and women, blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, rich and poor - misjudge each other.

The year 1968 encompasses the diverse realms of youth and music, politics and war, economics and the media. It was the year of sex and drugs and rock and roll. It was also the year of the Martin Luther King's assassination, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. This book shows us how one volatile year helped shape us into who we are.