Penguin (Non-Classics), 2003
In most of the world today, common salt (sodium chloride) is taken for granted; salt shakers sit on every home’s dining table and restaurants offer it for free, sometimes in convenient single-serving packets. But salt has not always been so inexpensive or so plentiful. Humans, like all other mammals, need to consume salt to survive. Furthermore, until the invention of canning in the 19th century, salting (or the related process of pickling) was the primary method of preserving meat, fish, and vegetables. The ability to produce large amounts of preserved food has long been a prerequisite for staging extended military campaigns as well as sea voyages of exploration or conquest. Thus, the production and control of salt have done much to control the course of human history.
Mark Kurlansky details the changing relationships between people and salt around the world and throughout recorded history. He discusses how salt figures into various mythologies and rituals. He talks about methods of salt production ranging from simply scraping crystals from desert sebkhas to refining the material with sophisticated vacuum evaporators. Particularly interesting are the historic recipes he weaves into his narrative, including a bevy of salty sauces: Roman garum, the Chinese ancestor of soy sauce, Tunisian charmula, and even Louisiana Tabasco. Kurlansky also devotes considerable time to the salt-related events and policies that have directly shaped history: discoveries, taxes, and monopolies. Along the way he points out how many of our place names — Salzburg, Halles, Gaul, innumerable –wiches — and words — salad, salary, soldier, salami — have roots meaning “salt.”
This is the second of Kurlansky’s books that I’ve read, the first being Cod, which shares some subject matter with Salt. He does a very good job of extracting exciting narratives from what at first glance might seem like mundane topics. He at times seems to ramble a bit from one thing to another, but always in a charming — rather than distracting — way. I recommend this book highly, alongside many of the other single-word-title materials histories that I’ve read.
