Salt: A World History

Interesting but not as enthralling as Bill Bryson's non fiction.

Structure: ★★ Prose: ★★★★ Pacing: ★★ Intrigue: ★★★ Logic: ★★★★ Enjoyment: ★★★Overall Rating: ★★★A food-focused history of one of the world's most infamous minerals.I love the idea of looking at history through the lens of a particular subject or commodity, but with specific subject matter comes the risk of becoming repetitive or dull. Salt: A World History unfortunately suffers from this. While Kurlansky offers fascinating historical data surrounding salt and its uses around the globe, there's only so many ways you can make preserving food (particularly several types of fish) interesting.The book does provide some intriguing information on cultural uses of salt, like the preservation of bodies in Egypt and the currency of salarium for Roman soldiers. I was, however, hoping to see more of that type of information. Why is salt part of so many superstitions for instance?The structure of the book was a little all over the place, literally. We jump through time and venture different regions of the world somewhat randomly, only to learn how they also used salt to preserve various food. Kurlansky also provides several recipes throughout the book, which is another thing that is interesting until you've read a few, and then they tend to blend into each other.In conclusion, there were some grains of interesting information in a mine of mundane.

So in depth. I would never have thought that salt was such an important catalyst for trade and the movement of people. I did find it hard going to read in some sections, because the writing can be very bland. The author takes no pains to make a series of facts into an engaging narrative.

Still, I liked learning about how closely intertwined human societies have always been with an innocuous mineral.

Positive: I now know way more about salt in history than I ever imagined before.
Negative: I'm not sure I wanted to know quite that much about salt, and did the book really need to be quite that long?

Personally, this felt like a deep dive into a Wikipedia article. It has lots of great reviews, but boy is it not for me.

So, I love microhistories. There's just something SO satisfying about learning a lot about the world by ostensibly learning about something small and contained. And Salt is basically the ur-microhistory – one of the first and most famous books in the genre.

By my typical standards of microhistory, Salt is a win: every conversation I had while reading it eventually came around to me saying something like “so did you know that one of the major advantages of the North in the civil war is that they had more salt mines?” and (since I read it while in Austria) “did you know that they used to open salt mines to the general public as adventure rides?” And I did learn a lot about (broader) history through the infinity stories of “this area used to belong to tribe, but nation came and took it over because it had a good access to sea salt” but overall, I found the book boring. Not that the topic was boring, but, well Kurlansky's writing style was not ideal for me...he simply doesn't have any form of linking information. He'll state a sentence but not link it to related concepts in the chapter, or provide any sort of information about why that particular fact is interesting. If background information is needed for context he doesn't provide it. My own textbook writing is filled with linking phrases like “therefore, it follows that...” or “in light of this, it's particularly interesting that...” to keep the reader grounded in how things relate to each other. Also, each chapter contains recipes for no clear reason. Often the recipes use quantities that aren't defined anywhere and Kurlansky won't tell us what he intends the recipe to be an example of?

Kurlansky also perseverates on some topics: like salted fish. I think there were three chapters on salted fish, and yes, this is a microhistory, but there's really a limit of how much I want to know about salted fish.

But the content was excellent and I'm glad I read it. Just, next time, hopefully with any degree of structure

Absolutely gorgeous and thought provoking book about humanity's relationship with the only rock we eat. From the very first handful of paragraphs, it's obvious the author has a keen interest in the subject, and a sharp sense of humour. Every chapter is mind blowing. Ancient and far reaching, the story of this ubiquitous compound that has changed lives around the dinner table and altered the path of empires is truly enlightening. Highly recommend it.

I learned so much from this book about world history, culture, and trade than I thought I would...of course, salt is still salt, but it has real power.

Wow! Long and complicated but full of interesting tidbits about cooking and history and trade routes and such. Definitely worth a read/listen! :)

A little tedious at times, but I learned a lot about ancient cultures and different moderns one by reading about how salt played a role in their cultures.

Didn't finish. Had to return it to the library and wasn't hooked enough to read faster or acquire through other means.

This was a thoroughly informative book on salt and its impact on world history. I learned many new things including the fact that the word stem “-wich” as in Norwich means salt works and that there's a rock salt mine 1,200 feet below Detroit.

This book had tremendous potential, but was ultimately dull and overladen with detail. It read like a history book and was a little too granular in detail. Kurlansky started out strong in the introduction; he would have done well to pepper in stories of his travels and a little humor throughout the rest of the novel, too.

This book was sooo interesting! I idly picked it up figuring, “Wow, I can't believe there's a whole book about salt... I don't know anything about salt.” And now? Now I know SO MUCH about salt! And so do all my friends, because the entire time I was reading it I kept inserting new salt-related factoids into conversation. My favorite? The phrase “red herring” comes from the salted red herrings that the Pilgrims used to distract the wolves that otherwise would have stalked them through the woods. Awesome. This book also had a kind of awesome subtle sense of humor. It's pretty much a whole world history using salt as a lens, focusing on trade and food history. Totally awesome.

This book changed my life. I picked it up because fiction novels were all looking the same to me, and because it was thick enough to last the long train ride from Dusseldorf to Maastricht. School textbooks were the only non-fiction I'd ever read, and they had not prepared me for the vibrant and engaging writing found in Salt. Since reading this book I have become a devoted fan of non-fiction writing, which has exposed me to a whole new world of literature.