Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Mark Kurlansky

1997 • 294 pages

Ratings28

Average rating3.8

Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been founded on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it, the settlement of North America was based on it. To those it has sustained, it is a treasure more precious than gold. It is the codfish, whose story – concisely and eloquently told by Mark Kurlansky – casts a fascinating and revealing fight on world history.COD spans a thousand years and four continents. From the extraordinary Basques, who first commercialized cod in medieval times, to Bartholomew Gosnold, who named Cape Cod in 1602, to Clarence Birdseye, who founded an industry on frozen cod in the 1930s; from 17th century cod wars to the story of how this once ubiquitous fish is today faced with extinction, dramatizing a global ecological crisis; from Nova Scotia and New England to Scandinavia, the coast of England, Brazil, and West Africa; Kurlansky tells a story that, through its narrow lens, open world history to readers in remarkable new ways.COD is enriched by historical photographs, drawings, and artifacts, as well as a collection of recipes, from the Middle Ages to great contemporary chefs, which tell their own piece of the legacy of the codfish.

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Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Patuleia

O Bacalhau quer'alho...

November 7, 2023

Kim L

The codfish lays a thousand eggs
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
To tell you what she's done.
And so we scorn the codfish
While the humble hen we prize
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.

June 6, 2014

Daren

This was interesting, covering the history of cod fishing all over the place, but mostly Canada, Iceland/Greenland and the demand for salt-cod in Spain, the West Indies and of course Britain.

For me however it missed a trick, and I would have liked to have a part of the book focus on the fish, not the fishing. There was a void where the scientific details of the many types of cod could have been explored and assessed. Instead we get a few of these types of facts spread through the narrative. For me, the “Biography of the fish that changed the world” needed to have this detail around the fish. A more accurate title would have replaced the word ‘fish' with ‘fishing'

But we get a good history of the fishing techniques and the boats, and we get an detailed history of the fishing grounds, the trade routes, the laws, the wars and the politics. Also worth a mention are the recipes spread through the book, and a concentration of these at the end however these all got a bit samey for me.

There are a lot of reviews already which explain the histories from the Basque voyaging to Canada to fish but keeping it secret for so long to the commercial operators today without cod to catch. I wouldn't do it justice here to try and pull together a narrative.

For me, just a 3 star read, with the biography missing its main component! If you are less interested in cod and more interested in cod fishing and it's history, this may be the book for you.

October 18, 2023