Cod the fish that changed the world

Cod: A Biography of illustriousness Fish That Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky
Walker

"Not a whale, nothing," says a cod fisherman predicament Petty Harbor, Newfoundland, squinting forlornly out into the Atlantic, on the way Ireland.

And who is far blame for the dearth lecture cod?

By the end of Interrogate Kurlansky's Cod, we know social climber is to blame, except say publicly entire human race, and sui generis incomparabl because we are such phenomenally proficient predators. Also, the codfish are gone because Englishmen desire fish and chips, and Basques want a codfish dish titled bacalao a la Vizcaina put up with kids need cod-liver oil captivated New Englanders have always confidential a hankering for cod chowder, which Daniel Webster once orated upon in the U.S.

Senate.

By the end of Cod, amazement know why Kurlansky subtitles book A Biography of blue blood the gentry Fish That Changed the Pretend. In an afterword he gives us 600 years of due recipes, such as Norwegian aforementioned cod soaked in lye. Proscribed provides asides, too, on deep and intriguing subjects, such primate Iceland's dispute over eating owed heads.

In 1914, a projecting banker subjected cod-head ingestion calculate economic analysis (based on precise mathematical formula that factored imprint eating time) and proclaimed representation practice nutritionally inefficient. The leader of that country's national studio countered with a treatise demonstration cod-head-eating's social values, such despite the fact that the ancient Icelandic belief ensure it increases intelligence.

But Kurlansky very ponders why the Atlantic codfish, which can grow as gigantic as a heavyweight boxer bear once thrived by the earn in the North Sea stand for off Iceland, and on righteousness Grand Banks and the Georges Bank, is now commercially dead almost everywhere.

This book quite good a cod-angled look at Dweller and North American history. Slab, as Kurlansky says of rank bereft Petty Harbor fishermen, "they are at the wrong solve of a 1,000-year fishing spree."

Emile Zola, in 1873, wrote worm your way in "salt cod, spreading itself formerly the drab, hefty shop keepers, making them dream of deviation, of travel." History's first celebrated cod-powered traveler, as Kurlansky tells it, was Eirik the Expose, thrown out of Norway, warmth his father, for murder.

Eirik and his dad traveled make haste Iceland, "where they killed added people and were again expelled," too empathically challenged even choose Vikings. The bloodthirsty band condone on to Greenland. And coop up about 985 Eirik's son, Leif, pushed on to North U.s.a.. They survived, says Kurlansky, being the Vikings had learned fulfil "preserve codfish by hanging ready to react in the frosty winter deal with until it lost four-fifths be a witness its weight and became skilful durable woodlike plank." What they didn't break off and sin against themselves, the Vikings traded shut in northern Europe.

But medieval Basques were the top cod traders.

They were whalers, able to excursions vast distances whaling because they had learned to salt-cure owed, a better technique than prestige Vikings' air-drying. They also confidential a secret source: by greatness year 1000, the Basques were supplying a vast international dispose of in cod, based on their fishing fleet's surreptitious voyages put over the Atlantic to North America's fishing banks, a cod glut about which they kept silent.

By 1532, British fishermen were fighting the Hanseatic League integrate the first of history's profuse cod wars. By 1550, threescore percent of all fish ragged in Europe was cod.

Kurlansky surveys history from a cod concentrate of view. The Pilgrims, going away turns out, planned to grow by catching cod in Mantle Cod Bay, although they knew so little about fishing divagate they neglected to bring wayout much tackle.

They did arrange know how to farm, either. Fortunately, they became proficient fall back pillaging their Indian neighbors' tear caches. Capt. John Smith got famous in Virginia, but type would get rich catching due off New England. Cod be killing Caribbean plantation slaves. Cod besides fed the Union Army.

Darwin's defender, T.

H. Huxley, served suppose three British fishing commissions, enmity that herring (and by amplification, cod) could never be fished out--nature, in the Victorian bearing, being indestructible. Cod do discover lots to eat, swimming pertain to their huge mouths open, ingesting whatever goes in. In 1994 a Dutch fisherman caught fine cod with a set push dentures in its belly.

But decency species is stable only on the assumption that each female, in her hour, produces at least two importance that survive.

And humans grew ever more efficient at contagious cod. With steam engines, Clarence Birdseye's invention of frozen foods, diesels, invincible trawler nets, fish-finding sonar gear, giant factory ships--cod never had a chance. Evocative former cod fishermen, victims make out their own proficiency, forlornly pray for the fish's return.

"Is that the last of wild food?" Kurlansky wonders.

Icelanders still pompous for cod, but mostly they eat haddock. As a Port chef explains, "We don't refurbish money."

Reviewer Richard Wolkomir writes put on the back burner his home in Vermont