Rating: 
Summary: Kurlansky uses salt as a thread to link cultures and history
Review: "Salt" takes the reader through thousands of years of human cultural and scientific development, all-the-while making it interesting and accessible. The common character throughout is ordinary table salt, which up until 100 years ago, played a far more important role in human society and economics. Through the use of this everyday material, Kurlansky takes us on a tour that from ancient China and Rome, to Britain's rule of India, into the slave operated salt mines of Europe, down to Avery Island during the American Civil War (and the creation of Tabasco Sauce); all with a focus on the cuisines of those places and times. A long book that I was sorry to finish.
Rating:
Summary: Kurlansky uses salt as a thread to link cultures and history
Review: "Salt" takes the reader through thousands of years of human cultural and scientific development, all-the-while making it interesting and accessible. The common character throughout is ordinary table salt, which up until 100 years ago, played a far more important role in human society and economics. Through the use of this everyday material, Kurlansky takes us on a tour that from ancient China and Rome, to Britain's rule of India, into the slave operated salt mines of Europe, down to Avery Island during the American Civil War (and the creation of Tabasco Sauce); all with a focus on the cuisines of those places and times. A long book that I was sorry to finish.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it with a grain of "you know what"
Review: After reading Mark Kurlansky's informative, yet disjointed book, I know more about salt than I ever would have known or might have cared to. While it's billed as a "history" of salt this book is really more like an encyclopedia. Digesting the facts about salt's ride through history, its effect on empires, its uses (and the best part....some great recipes!) takes some doing, but I give the author credit for his breadth of knowledge on the subject.The problem with Mr. Kurlansky's book is his writing style. The narrative is confusing as he jumps from century to century, east to west, north to south without a clue as to where he's headed next. He's the "Where's Waldo" of the information trade. Good histories make sensible unions with their subjects, but "Salt, A World History" becomes a dot-to-dot puzzle without the lines that are needed to connect. Unfortunately, that often means putting this book down. I'm glad I read it and glad I finished it
but if the author is going to write a sequel on pepper I hope he can redefine his presentation.
Rating:
Summary: Read it with a grain of "you know what"
Review: After reading Mark Kurlansky's informative, yet disjointed book, I know more about salt than I ever would have known or might have cared to. While it's billed as a "history" of salt this book is really more like an encyclopedia. Digesting the facts about salt's ride through history, its effect on empires, its uses (and the best part....some great recipes!) takes some doing, but I give the author credit for his breadth of knowledge on the subject. The problem with Mr. Kurlansky's book is his writing style. The narrative is confusing as he jumps from century to century, east to west, north to south without a clue as to where he's headed next. He's the "Where's Waldo" of the information trade. Good histories make sensible unions with their subjects, but "Salt, A World History" becomes a dot-to-dot puzzle without the lines that are needed to connect. Unfortunately, that often means putting this book down. I'm glad I read it and glad I finished it
but if the author is going to write a sequel on pepper I hope he can redefine his presentation.
Rating:
Summary: Salt, or not salt?
Review: Because others will write to praise this book's many good points, I will limit my remarks to a discussion of its major flaw: The author repeatedly fails to distinguish between "salt" (sodium chloride) and "salts" (a class of chemical compounds which, like sodium chloride, are formed by the union of an acid and a base). Any of these compounds can be called "a salt," but only sodium chloride is referred to as simply "salt." This error will be merely irritating to readers who have some knowledge of chemistry, but confusing and misleading to those who do not. For example: On page 28 he says "gunpowder. . .was one of the first industrial applications of salt." (In the next sentence we learn that he means potassium nitrate.) On page 196 he tells us, without clarification, that "salt was strategic, like gunpowder, which was also made from salt." Most confusing of all, on page 294: "game was preserved in nitrate [by rubbing the meat] with a blend of salt and gunpowder, which was potassium nitrate." Huh?
Rating:
Summary: here's the scoop
Review: Cod was a delightful little book. Salt is not. Problem #1. Salt sprawls. China, India, England. Sailing, cooking, chemistry. Too much information, no theme. Problem #2. Cod had a narrative: we moved fromEurope to America, and from abundance to overfishing. Salt doesn't go anywhere, it just goes on, and on. Problem # 3. Kurlansky doesn't know everything. Okay, nobody does but few people tackle Chinese statebuilding, Roman cooking, and American quarrying in the same volume. No wonder he botches lots of facts. Of course, Kurlansky is not an historian. This shows. One small example: He explains that Egypt led the ancient western world in food preservation methods because, confined to a narrow strip of fertile land along the Nile, the Egyptians worried constantly about crop failure. Wrong. Not only wrong, but backwards. Egypt led the world in food preservation because it had the richest, most productive, and far and away the most reliable agricultre in the known world. It was plenty, not fear of dearth, that enabled Egyptians the luxury of developing preserving techniques that enabled them to enjoy a wide variety of exotic and out-of-season foods. Problem # 4. It lacks charm. I mean, if it's not fun to read, what's the point. Cod was fun to read, but throw this one back. There are lots of better books on the shelves.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun with Non-Facts
Review: Engagingly written, broad in concept, Salt, A World History, contained so many errors that I felt nothing the author wrote could be trusted. For a list e-mail....
Rating:
Summary: An easily digestible history
Review: From Cod to the Basques, French policy that caused a revolution to British policy that fueled Ghandi's salt pilgrimage, table salt to Epsom salt, hot sauce to heated debate, salt has taken a prominent role in world history. _Salt: A World History_ illustrates this perfectly, with well written prose and a pinch of humor. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Take it with a grain of salt?
Review: I gave this book five stars because I found it absolutely fascinating. It didn't bother me that it went all over the world and back a few times. I felt that it did, actually, hang together, as in the various instances when Americans would invent something useful to the salt industry but, as it turns out, the Chinese had already invented it a couple thousand years before. I live in a town that was the most important salt-producing area in the United States for many years. It could be said that the Civil War was won with Syracuse-Salina-Liverpool, New York salt. I also learned that the village of Liverpool was so named because boxes of high-quality salt were being shipped around the world from Liverpool, England... and the salt manufacturers here wanted to ship out boxes of salt labeled "Liverpool Salt"! I don't know whether or not it's comforting to realize that both branding and fraud were aspects in the naming of this village over 150 years ago. I wonder, however, about possible inaccuracies, as pointed out by another reviewer. I have lived here much of my life, but have never heard this version of the naming of our town. The village website claims to not know the exact reason for the name. So, perhaps we need to take some parts of this book with a grain of salt. With that in mind, however, this book is entertaining and deliciously long for those whose attention span hasn't been artificially shortened by too much TV.
Rating:
Summary: Take it with a grain of salt?
Review: I gave this book five stars because I found it absolutely fascinating. It didn't bother me that it went all over the world and back a few times. I felt that it did, actually, hang together, as in the various instances when Americans would invent something useful to the salt industry but, as it turns out, the Chinese had already invented it a couple thousand years before. I live in a town that was the most important salt-producing area in the United States for many years. It could be said that the Civil War was won with Syracuse-Salina-Liverpool, New York salt. I also learned that the village of Liverpool was so named because boxes of high-quality salt were being shipped around the world from Liverpool, England... and the salt manufacturers here wanted to ship out boxes of salt labeled "Liverpool Salt"! I don't know whether or not it's comforting to realize that both branding and fraud were aspects in the naming of this village over 150 years ago. I wonder, however, about possible inaccuracies, as pointed out by another reviewer. I have lived here much of my life, but have never heard this version of the naming of our town. The village website claims to not know the exact reason for the name. So, perhaps we need to take some parts of this book with a grain of salt. With that in mind, however, this book is entertaining and deliciously long for those whose attention span hasn't been artificially shortened by too much TV.
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