Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas

Mmm...not in love with this book, for all that I am a keen food historian, cook, and researcher. I still recommend “Salt” to friends, 20 years after getting my first copy, but while I'm going to finish “Milk”, it is tedious and doesn't grip me. Perhaps a tiny bit it's the narrator's voice on Audible...but the contents also aren't amazing me. Huh. Too bad, but I have added a few factoids to my history-teacher's brain so all is not lost.

Loved Cod and Salt; Milk, not so much. Kind of dull, actually.

I became acquainted with Kurlansky's writing when his book Salt was recommended to me. That novel was so expertly crafted, I found myself being amazed by interesting history just about every paragraph. It's the type of story you would want to return to several times. Milk! is written in much the same style, but isn't quite that engaging in practice. This may be because Kurlansky has peppered the book with a greater number of recipes, or it may just be that the history of Milk and dairy products isn't quite as sordid and dark as it is with Salt. That said, there's been a long journey between humanity and milk, whether that's cows milk, human milk, goats milk, or milk from some other animal... and I still had several of those “Oh Wow!” moments. While this might not be as epic scaled as Salt, it's still a strong labour of love, and worth reading.