Explores the role of salt in shaping history, discussing how one of the world's most sought-after commodities has influenced economics, science, politics, religion, and eating customs.

Kurlansky discusses the history of commercial cod fishing and the plight of the Atlantic fish and fisheries today as the cod faces extinction

Presents a history of paper and the unexpected ways it shaped a modern world transitioning toward digital technologies, tracing the role of paper and papermaking in education, media, religion, commerce, and art.

By a series of coincidences, Mark Kurlansky’s life has always been intertwined with Ernest Hemingway's legend, starting with being in Idaho the day of Hemingway’s death. The Importance of Not Being Ernest explores the intersections between Hemingway’s and Kurlansky’s lives, resulting in creative accounts of two inspiring writing careers. Travel the world with Mark Kurlansky and Ernest Hemingway in this personal memoir, where Kurlansky details...

Gr 7 Up-Kurlansky outlines the history of lying in this informative and compelling introduction to the topic, specifically focusing on the lies of governments, politicians, and corporations with a political agenda. He opens with a general introduction to lying: personal and public, intentional or not, as well as various reasons for lying and its acceptability. Particularly interesting is the discussion of the principles of the Enlightenment, how they...

Offers a unique "fish-eyed" look at one thousand years of human civilization.

"From the award-winning, bestselling author of COD--the irresistible story of the science, history, art, and culture of the least efficient way to catch a fish. Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish--and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets--salmon, trout, and char--are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky finds, is that fly fishing makes...

"This biography tells the life story of Clarence Birdseye, the man who revolutionized the frozen food industry, and is adapted from Mark Kurlansky's adult work Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man. Adventurer and inventor Clarence Birdseye had a fascination with food preservation that led him to develop and patent the Birdseye freezing process and start the company that still bears his name today. His limitless curiosity spurred his other inventions,...

In these stories, Mark Kurlansky journeys to his familiar haunts like New York's Central Park or Miami's Little Havana but with an original, earthy, and adventurous perspective. From baseball players in the Dominican Republic to Basque separatists in Spain to a restaurant owner in Cuba, from urban coyotes to a murder of crows, Kurlansky travels the worlds of animals and their human counterparts, revealing moving and hilarious truths about our connected...