Fascinating history of Cod - and how it has influenced our own history significantly

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Product Description

The Cod - wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been triggered by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious that gold. This book spans 1,000 years and four continents. From the Vikings to Clarence Birdseye, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs and fisherman, whose lives have been interwoven with this prolific fish. He chronicles the cod wars of the 16th and 20th centuries. He blends in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages to the present. 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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16051 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
To make the history of a fish interesting, invigorating and moving is an almost impossible feat that Mark Kurlansky accomplishes fantastically well in this compact, learned, beautifully written gem of a book. Cod traces humankind's involvement with what was once one of the world's most plentiful foodstuffs. The Basque people, who Kurlansky suggests found America before Columbus, could only fish and forage (for whale meat) as far as they did because of the huge schools of cod they found, caught and salted as they went. Centuries before this Vikings had travelled from Norway across to Canada--the exact range of the Atlantic cod. Interspersed with old and forgotten recipes Cod becomes a fitting requiem to a fish no-one believed would ever become scarce nor become such a telling metaphor for our careless treatment of the sea, its bounty and our wider environment. --Mark Thwaite

Sir Roy Strong, Express On Sunday
This is an extraordinary little book, unputdownable, written in the most lyrical, flowing style which paints vivid pictures and, at the same time, punches into place hard facts that stop you dead in your tracks. Who would ever think that a book on cod would make a compulsive read? And yet this is precisely what Kurlansky has done.

Scotsman
An engrossing and timely little epic.

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Customer Reviews

A good read
Kulansky undoubted enthusiasm for the subject shines through in the book; most people's perception of a book on fish would be to leave it on the shelf. However Kurlansky brings to life a fish, which has in a large yet often unrecognised way shaped the fate of the modern world. Interspersed with recipe ideas the book focuses on Cod, which was once regarded as one of the most abundant food sources. However due to mans ignorance and disregard the cod is fast becoming an endangered quantity. Kulansky delves into the history of the cod fisheries, which date back to medieval times. In fact before Columbus found America in 1492, the Basques had been fishing the coast off America for Cod and undoubtedly had discovered land over five hundred years before Columbus.

The book paints very vivid pictures of the way in which cod involved as part of trade restrictions help stoke the fire of American independence, played its role in the slave trade, and contributed to numerous stands offs and confrontations between countries. In fact the legendary cod wars of the 1970's between Iceland and the United Kingdom, are only recent additions to the ongoing dispute between nations over fishing grounds. In the 1480's the Hanseatic League, which was formed to stand up for the merchant class in northern German towns prevented Bristol merchants from buying Icelandic cod.

The wealth of some of modern days most powerful and influential nations primarily the United States and Canada, originated from cod resources. In fact cod played such an important part in creating the wealth of many of the first American aristocrats, it was often idealised by those Americans that had become rich on this once abundance resource. Many of the first American coins issued from 1776 to 1778 had codfish on them. When the first American aristocrats built their mansions they decorated them with codfish.

Kulansky also delves into the harsh reality of the dangers and the reality faced by trawler men especially before modern fishing methods were adopted. Many fishermen would lose limbs, due to frostbite, many of the early fishing boats were extremely unstable and a large percentage of men drowned at sea. Even today with the high attention to safety fishing is still one of the most precarious trades, a British survey in 1983 showed the death rate among British fisherman to be twenty times higher than in manufacturing.

Kulansky ends the book with a poignant look at the lost of cod stocks in the sea, focusing on the virtual disappearance of the cod stock around Newfoundland which was once the largest cod fishery in the world. Mans disregard and belief that nature is an unlimited resource over 1000 years has caused devastation and the disappearance of one of mans last wild natural food resource.

This book is extremely interesting read, with many fascinating facts. The book will definitely change peoples perception of Cod, and to my amazement, the cod is a fish that really did change the world.

The best fishy-history book I've ever read!
We are now all aware of the dire straits the fishing industry is now in. All around the world fish stocks are crashing, primarily due to overfishing, but also due to environmental problems (most of which are also due to human kind). This book follows mans intimate relationship with one fish; the cod. It examines the early respect for nature and the fish which controlled peoples livelihoods, how we came to abuse that relationship and ultimately how fisherman have destroyed their only source of income. Pasion, greed and a way of life lost.

Fascinating
An intriguing mixture of history, sociology, politics, conservation and cooking!

This book charts the history of cod fishing from the dark ages to the present. The Basques were apparently the first peoples to fish cod commercially and as such they beat even the Vikings to North America by exploiting the rich fishing grounds off the east coast.

There is discussion of the ways that different people in Europe liked their cod. Here in Britain it is eaten almost 100% fresh (or at least fresh frozen), whilst in other countries they would not touch fresh cod, the French wanting only salted fish. Presumably this is historical due to the problems of transporting fresh fish over any great distance.

In North America the Basques got lost in the shuffle because they never bothered to lay territorial claims to the land around their fishing stations, and we get a dispassionate description of the “Cod Wars” between Iceland and the UK, untainted by propaganda.

But the theme that runs through the book is over fishing. From the early days when the fish stocks were believed to be inexhaustible to the present when commercial sized fish are all but extinct in many areas of the North Atlantic. There is the bewilderment and anger of the fishermen, who blame anyone but themselves for the state of their fishing industry and the restrictions that have had to be imposed upon it.

The book is interspersed with cod recipes down the ages. Some are pretty disgusting to me; we don’t eat the intestines in the UK! Others I’m going to try just as soon as I can get my hands on some good fresh fish.