Salt: A World History

Great book, impressed how salt has a complex and rich history. From valued in ancient history. invaluable in the middle ages, to being related to 50% of the chemicals produced today. Salt tax funded kingdoms and fueled wars. A rare book that ties history and progress in a enlightening, well written book

This book is well worth reading... as it gives a different perspective to world history... Salt... which for most of history has been an expensive commodity. The Gandhi history as it pertains to salt was especially helpful as most books skim over the reasons for the protests without clearly explaining them. However as you reach the end of the book you feel as if the author has reached his word limit and concludes without completing the work. Some of the concluding comments are on anti-caking agents (magnesium carbonate, calcium silicate and sodium hexacyanoferrate II) and additives (Fluoride & Iodine). [...] However the book fails to expand on any of this... cyanide? Not worthy of some explanation? Fluoride? Not even a mention of any controversy? It's effect on enzymes ie. cooking. Yet Iodine (much less controversial) gets a fair bit of attention. Go figure? The book fails to mention the one anti-caking agent that is probably the most common: aluminium. The book really ought to have included a bit more on coloured salts... which often have a magnificent taste... but instead it's jammed up at the end and disposed of in an almost cursory manner. Missing bits: It is intriguing that a book might be written about salt and the chemical formula is not drawn anywhere ie. NaCl (or Na+ Cl- in solution). Good detail... missed the punch line? The author misses the reason for fermentation... which is healthy because it donates many healthy bacteria to support the gut ie. it's an excellent probiotic. The dismissal of May butter while noting that it was reputed to have health properties was annoying. May is the month that spring occurs in the northern hemisphere... and that will also correspond with maximal Vitamin K2 production... which is almost certainly why butter has a reputation as a health food in this month. It was enjoyable to go for a ride around the globe... including a huge amount of detail on Chinese salt making... a country that so many authors skip when writing a book. Likewise the photos of some of these unusual slices of history were great eg. chinese drilling rigs which drilled to 4400 feet with only bamboo. Although you're left wishing there were even more of them. There was a fair bit of detail about cooking with salt: various historical recipes many of which helped capture the period under discussion brilliantly. The writing style was engaging throughout the book so you won't get bored. If you're curious you'll enjoy the book because you'll learn lots of stuff about salt you didn't know. :-)

Amazing story. Who would think that salt could be so interesting. In our age of refrigeration and freezing, we have forgotten the importance of salt in daily life for hundreds of years.

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.

El libro intenta hacer una historia paralela, contandonos la evolución del uso y comercio de la sal, y el impacto de éste en la economía global del periodo. Interesante, merece la pena echarle un rato

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

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.

Salt! There is a history of salt. I mean why wouldn’t there be, right? What a great read, with style, compassion, and a contagious interest and passion for the subject, if not those along the way. 100% recommend.