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.

In Thunderstruck, like in his earlier book Devil In the White City, Erik Larson follows two men — one a visionary and the other a cold-blooded killer. In this case the hero is Guglielmo Marconi, the first man to create a successful method of wireless communication. The villain is Harvey Hawley Crippen, a sometime doctor and seller of patent medicines who was to all outward appearances a kind, gentle, upstanding citizen. Larson follows the lives of the two men from their births in the third quarter of the nineteenth century until their paths (although not the men themselves) met in a very public way in 1910.

Marconi became fascinated with magnetism and electricity at an early age. By his early twenties, he had become an obsessive experimenter, spending days at a time in the laboratory he had put together in the attic of his parents’ villa. Marconi had a basic idea of what he wanted to do — transmit a message using invisible waves — and how to do it — he had read descriptions of earlier experiments by Heinrich Hertz and Oliver Lodge — but he worked almost entirely by trial and error. It was this approach, that of a practician rather than a theorist, that would later make Marconi the subject of other scientists’ derision. Marconi’s method of working would also prove costly for his wireless telegraphy company, as he built ever larger and more complex installations on the coasts of England, Canada, and the United States, trying to perfect wireless trans-Atlantic communication without having a firm grasp on the underlying laws of physics.

Harvey Crippen, trained in homeopathic medicine at the University of Michigan, worked in a variety of medical professions. He had a private medical practice in San Diego and was employed as an optometrist in St. Louis, but spent the bulk of his career working for various patent medicine companies in Philadelphia, New York, and London. Crippen worked hard to support his wife, Cora, whose exotic tastes in clothes, furniture, and jewelery, along with the pursuit of her unrealistic ambitions of becoming a famous singer, proved very expensive. The Crippens presented the front of a happy couple, but mistrust, betrayal, and Cora’s controlling nature lurked beneath the surface.

Larson does a wonderful job of setting the scene for his two stories. Edwardian London is the chief setting, as both Marconi and Crippen spend fair amounts of time there. But the other side of the Atlantic — and indeed the ocean itself — also serve important roles, as ships and radio waves travel back and forth. My complaint about Larson’s previous books has been that his use of dialog and descriptions of individuals’ thought and feelings strains historical credibility. Larson does a much better job in Thunderstruck, using less dialog and more explicitly citing his sources within the text itself.

I found the two stories fascinating — especially that of Marconi — but through much of the book I felt that the connection between the men is tenuous at best. By the end Larson makes a pretty good argument for combining the two, but I’m not sure that I’m convinced. Still, he knows how to tell a good story, and Thunderstruck makes for a compelling read.

Mining engineer Philip Mercer attends a Paris rare book auction, charged by a friend with buying a nineteenth-century journal written by Godin de Lepinay. Lepinay explored Panama during the planning stages of the Panama Canal, and Mercer’s friend Gary Barber thinks that the journal might offer some clues to finding a fabled Incan treasure. At the auction, a mysterious Chinese bidder buys everything associated with the Panama Canal. Luckily the auctioneer is an old friend of Mercer’s, and sets aside the journal for him. But, Mercer doesn’t make it very far from the auction house before he finds himself being pursued by three Chinese assassins. He leads them on a chase through the catacombs and sewers of Paris, eventually managing to escape with the journal intact.

Mercer then travels to Panama as quickly as he can, intending to meet up with his friend. He arrives at Berber’s base camp deep in the jungle only to find the whole team dead. Mercer and Captain Lauren Vanik, a U.S. Army officer stationed nearby, scope out the area, and are nearly killed by another team of Chinese mercenaries. Realizing that they have stumbled into the middle of some sinister plot, they set out to investigate further. Along the way, they are joined by a team of French Foreign Legionnaires, a former canal pilot, and a retired sea captain, and reveal an impending Chinese power-grab on the world stage.

I picked this book up because I was curious what one of Clive Cussler’s “co-writers” writes under his own name. Unsurprisingly, Cussler and DuBrul seem to be cut from the same cloth. River of Ruin contains many of the elements that make up the standard Cussler formula: a rugged scientist/adventurer, a gorgeous and very capable love interest, an archaeological puzzle, water-based action sequences, and a nefarious plot to take over the world. DuBrul’s tale comes across as a bit more grounded in reality than do many of Cussler’s, however; River of Ruin is still a thrill-a-minute adventure novel, but it is lergely free of the “oh, come on!” moments that abound in Cussler.

Sock is, at its heart, a mystery novel; a woman is murdered and the protagonist, a policeman, sets out to find her killer. But, as one might expect from the self-described “larger, louder half” of Penn & Teller, this is far from your standard detective novel. The story is narrated by Dickie, the main character’s sock monkey. Dickie’s owner, who we only know as ‘the Little Fool’ for most of the book, is a cop, but he’s not a detective. He’s a police diver who spends most of his time pulling bodies out of New York’s East River; he doesn’t normally solve cases. But, when one of the bodies he retrieves turns out to be that of Nell, one of his ex-girlfriends, the Little Fool decides to try his hand at detective work.

He has to do so in a completely unofficial capacity, of course, and he enlists the help of Tommy, Nell’s best friend and pedicurist. The unlikely partners spend all their free time trying to reconstruct Nell’s last days and figure out who might have murdered her. They get a break in the form of a note from the killer. But, as the Little Fool finds the note pinned to another body he pulls out of the river, it also means that they’re dealing with a dangerous psychopath who will almost certainly kill again.

Penn’s sock monkey narrator certainly provides an interesting twist, but I found Dickie’s stream-of-consciousness narrative style to be somewhat distracting. I could get used to it after awhile, but it made for a slow start every time I picked up the book. Also, although Penn has a fairly interesting story to tell, he does it in a very vulgar manner. I’m not easily offended, but I found the sheer quantity of cursing and descriptions of sex acts to be a bit much. I read some of this book while traveling, and at times I felt the need to cover chapter titles so that people around me wouldn’t see them. I can’t really recommend this book; I’d say that your time would be much better spent watching some of Penn & Teller’s wonderful magic or their in-your-face skeptic series “Bullshit!” on Showtime.

In The Chase, Clive Cussler for the first time strays from his usual nautical focus (although the book’s opening scene does take place on a salvage boat) and his interwoven casts of existing characters. His new protagonist, Isaac Bell, does take seom cues from the Dirk Pitt/Kurt Austin mold, but he also seems to take some inspiration from James West (of The Wild Wild West as well. Bell is a young man from a wealthy family who, just after the turn of the twentieth century, is the best detective at the private Van Dorn agency (modelled after the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Bell is called to Denver to help in the investigation of a particularly brutal bank robber known only as the Butcher Bandit. The Bandit hits banks when they have large amounts of cash on hand, kills all witnesses, and always manages to disappear completely. Bell and his fellow Van Dorn agents hunt the Butcher Bandit and his beautiful accomplice throughout the western U.S., involving a train vs. car race through California and culminating in a steam locomotive chase over the Sierras, through Nevada and Idaho, and into Montana.

I enjoyed this book more than Cussler’s last few novels. It’s fresh subject matter for him, and The Chase has no co-author. I hope that he’ll Write more Isaac Bell novels and that he’ll do them himself, rather than farming them out to his growing stable of collaborators.

Fool is Christopher Moore's retelling of King Lear, told from the perspective of — who else — Lear’s court jester. The jester, who Moore names Pocket, may be a fool by trade, but he is certainly no dunce. He has free run of the castle, friends in both high and low places, and with Lear’s protection is free to make fun of whoever he wants. He is also very close to Lear’s daughters Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Pocket is most loyal to Lear and Cordelia, and throughout Moore’s take on the tale, it is his behind-the-scenes scheming that serves to protect their interests and lives.

Fool opens with a tongue-in-cheek warning from Moore that “This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity…” In other words, Shakespeare probably would’ve loved it. Moore acknowledges that taking on one of the most famous plays by the best known English writer of all time was a daunting task. But, then again, this is from the same man who wrote a novel about the lost years in the life of Jesus (and his best friend Biff). He retains basically all of Lear’s complex plot, although he of course makes Pocket and his machinations more integral to that plot. The ending is different, though — you can’t have a comic novel with a truly tragic finish. Moore also brings in dialog and characters from other of the Bard’s plays, most notably the trio of witches from Macbeth.

I’ve read all of Christopher Moore’s novels, and I think that Fool is one of his best. I read most of the book during a stint in a pit orchestra (coincidentally for a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard, which also features a jester), and I had to be very careful not to laugh out loud at inopportune moments. A familiarity with King Lear is helpful but by no means a requirement for reading Fool; reading the synopsis on Wikipedia is probably sufficient preparation. I can’t recommend Moore’s writing highly enough, for those readers who enjoy a twisted sense of humor. Start with Fool, Lamb, or Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, then check out some of his other novels.

Long cloth ties are today found throughout the world around men’s necks (and sometimes those of women as well). Other types of neckwear are of course worn for certain occasions (bow ties with tuxedos) or in certain regions (string or bolo ties in the American Southwest), but none matches the long tie in its ubiquity.

But, if you ask most any tie-wearing man (including me) how many different tie knots they use, the answer will be “one.” Usually that one knot is the four-in-hand, and a fair number of people are aware of the existence of another knot or two: the Windsor or half-Windsor, although these areich less commonly used.

Surely, though, there are more than three ways to tie a tie. Thomas Fink and Yong Mao, two Cambridge theoretical physicists, decided, apparently on a whim, to devote their considerable talents to discovering all the possible (an practical) tie knots. Once they realized that tie knots are “equivalent to persistant random walks on a triangular lattice” (an observation that Is evidently a rather simple leap for a pair of physicists), it was a simple matter to mathematically derive 85 different ways to tie a tie.

Fink and Mao begin their book with a short history of men’s neckwear. The earliest examples of knotted neck cloths they cite are those adorning the 7500 terracotta soldiers found in the tomb of China’s first emperor. Other early examples come from Rome in the second century A.D., but decorative men’s neck cloths seem not to have really caught on until the seventeenth century. From that point until the early twentieth century (when long ties became de rigeur) a succession of neck cloth styles developed in Europe: cravats, stocks, bow ties, Ascots, etc.

A second introductory chapter is devoted to knots and knot theory. The authors provide a basic overview of the technical aspects of knots and knot tying and of historical attempts to ennumerate and categorize knots. They then explain in detail their own theory of tie knots. They lay out both the technical limitations of tie knots (the tie must pass around the neck, and all knots must be terminated such that the two ends hang downwards) as well as the aesthetic considerations (size, shape, symmetry, and balance).

The third chapter forms the meat of the book. In it, Fink and Mao ennumerate their 85 knots, organized by the number of moves it takes to complete each one. Each knot is accompanied by a step-by-step tying diagram and notes about how it relates to other knots, when appropriate. The thirteen knits that the authors deem most aesthetically pleasing are discussed at greater length, and are illustrated with photographs of well-known men sporting them. Among this subset of knots are, of course, the familiar four-in-hand, Windsor, and half-Windsor.

The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie is a delightfully whimsical little book, quintessentially British in it’s subject matter, tone, and humor. The authors manage to explain what turns out to be a surprisingly complex problem in a way that’s pretty easy to understand. For those readers who desire a more precise explanation, Fink and Mao supply am appendix chock full of formulas and derivatives. The book contains plenty of photographs, illustrations, and diagrams, which are quite helpful in understanding the history, knot theory, and all the knot variations.

This book is less than ten years old, but it us already out of print and used copies go for fifty dollars or more. I got my hands on a copy via Interlibrary Loan. But, if you’d just like a quick overview and a list of all 85 knots with directions, Thomas Fink provides them on his web site.

The Broken Window pits Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs against a mysterious and devious criminal whose M.O. is to carefully frame innocent people for his thefts and murders. His frame jobs are so perfect that he has gone completely undetected for years. His existence only comes to light when Rhyme realizes that the evidence in a murder investigation is too perfect. Soon, the police find a number of past cases that bear the same signs, in which innocent people may very well have been convicted.

With very little to go on, Rhyme et. al. set about learning more about their quarry. But, he always seems to be a couple of steps ahead of them; the closer they get, the more he seems to know about them and their plans. It quickly becomes apparent that this criminal can somehow find out anything about anyone — and in his hands, knowledge is certainly power.

As is his wont, Deaver packs plenty of twists and red herrings into his tale. In his last Rhyme/Sachs novel, The Cold Moon, the detectives were too good at anticipating the twists, which sucked some of the suspense out of the book. I think that Deaver handles his surprises better in The Broken Window; he keeps both the reader and the protagonists guessing. I also like that Deaver basically sticks to a single plot in this book, rather than the interweaving of numerous subplots that he uses in some earlier books.

The only annoyance this novel holds for me has to do with Deaver’s discussions of computers (which play a central role). His use of technological terms and jargon feels slightly off in places, although he has improved a great deal sine The Blue Nowhere, his hacker mystery. This is a minor fault, though, and probably wouldn’t bother anyone who isn’t somewhat of a computer nerd.

Edward Wozny is a hotshot New York investment banker who is about to assume a prestigious position at his firm’s London branch. At the beginning of what is supposed to be two weeks off to prepare for his move, Edward is summoned to an apartment owned by important clients of his company — a British duke and duchess. He is charged with cataloging their library, which had been sent to the United States for safe keeping during World War II and then promptly forgotten about. Edward is told to keep a sharp eye out among the old tomes for a certain book by Gervase of Langford.

Lacking any training in librarianship or particular interest in old books, Edward is initially annoyed, but finds himself strangely drawn in following an afternoon with the dusty volumes. He visits the Chenoweth Rare Book and Manuscript Repository, where he serendipitously encounters Margaret Napier, a Gervase of Langford scholar. Although she (and most everyone else) considers the book Edward is looking for to be a myth, she agrees to help with the cataloging.

Meanwhile, a programmer friend gives Edward a copy of a computer game called MOMUS. The game is hyper-real and somewhat enigmatic; no one knows exactly who created it. Edward quickly becomes immersed in MOMUS, spending more and more of his free time in the virtual world.

While examining the contents of the library, Margaret becomes increasingly convinced that the mysterious book does exist, and was once a part of the collection. She and Edward embark on a hunt to find the book. They dig up information about the library’s history, sneak into the Chenoweth’s massive archival facility, and unwittingly become embroiled in the schemes of British nobles. As they proceed, Edward begins to notice eerie similarities between MOMUS and their real-life quest.

The premise of Codex, with its forgotten library, mythical manuscript, and eerily relevant computer game has potential. But, the book itself turns out to be somewhat lackluster and disappointing. MOMUS is set up to have important parallels to the search for the Gervase book, but there are only ever a few of these. The whole computer game suplot seems underdeveloped and out of place. Also, the book’s ending isn’t very satisfying. The plot gets increasingly complex, then just seems to peter out.

A couple of errors (that should have been caught by an editor) early in the book soured my opinion somewhat, as well. One is a reference to tree sap turning into amber over a few thousand years (amber is formed from tree resin over millions of years). The other is a mention of illustrations of “vivisected corpses” (“vivi-” meaning “living”; a corpse can be dissected, but not vivisected).

Codex is okay, not great. If you find it (as I did) at a used book sale for a buck and want a quick, largely mindless read, go for it. Otherwise, don’t bother.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan sets out to trace the origins of three meals, each the product of a different food chain. These food chains — the industrial, the pastoral, and the personal, as he calls them — basically represent in reverse order the various human relationships with food. In doing this, he hopes to shed light on what he terms America’s “national eating disorder:” we lack national food traditions, and are often so far removed from our food’s origins that we have to rely on food companies and nutritionists to tell us what to eat. For Pollan, this disorder reached its height with the Atkins diet craze, that fad that sought to suck the soul (bread, pasta, even fruit!) out of American meals and replace it with large quantities of meat.

In America’s industrial food chain, everything seems to revolve around corn. Government subsidies encourage farms to produce far more Zea mays than the American people can eat. It falls to food scientists to figure out what to do with the surplus (and successful corn-based products only lead to a demand for more corn). Today, corn is processed by so-called “wet mills” into dozens of diverse substances: vitamins, corn oil, adhesives, stabilizers, acids, ethanol, emulsifiers, and sweeteners (including the sneakily ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup). These various “fractions” of corn are the building blocks of the processed foods industry.

Besides providing the raw materials for such Frankenfoods as Cool Whip and Cheez Whiz, corn fuels the industrial production of beef. A far cry from the pastoral stereotype of cows lazily munching grass in an open field, the purpose of industrial feedlots is to cram cows full of cheap calories (largely from corn), fattening them up as quickly as possible. Cows on a corn diet must also be medicated, as their digestive systems have evolved to process grass, not corn (antibiotics are also necessary to deal with the cramped and squalid living conditions on a feedlot).

The first meal that Pollan and his family eat comes from McDonald’s, and they consume it — appropriately — in their car. The meal’s constituent parts are known (corn products are used to cook the fries, thicken the shake, sweeten the soda, construct the chicken nuggets, feed the chickens and cows, and partially fuel the car), but their origins are totally obscured by the industrial food chain. Pollan asks the question “Where does [this food] come from?” and provides the only viable answer: “It comes from McDonald’s.”

Pollan approaches the pastoral food chain with the intention of once again tracing the origins of a single meal. But he soon realizes that “organic” food runs the gamut from that produced by industrial farms that carefully adhere to government standards to that frown on very small farms that follow more traditional methods. Thus, he splits his time in this section of the book between the “supermarket pastoral” (think Whole Foods) and the “beyond organic” (think Amish farm stand).

Behind the flowery descriptions of produce and meat at Whole Foods, Pollan discovers huge factory farms that resemble those he visited in pursuit of industrial food. The only difference, in most cases, is that small changes have been made to fit government definitions of “organic,” “free range,” or “all natural.” He finds that often what’s being sold is a nice story, not necessarily more sustainable or more friendly food.

At the other end of the spectrum lie much smaller operations, like Polyface Farm in Virginia, that adhere to the spirit of the organic movement rather than to the letter of organic law. Polyface is in many ways a traditional family farm, raising cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, and a variety of produce on about a hundred acres of open land. But Joel Salatin, the farm’s owner, practices a very complex form of rotational grazing that keeps the pasture healthy and vibrat, produces an astounding quantity of meat, and requires but a single outside input: chicken food — no fertilizers, no antibiotics, no pariciticides. Paradoxically, Salatin’s farm is not certified “organic,” although it certainly is among the most sustainable and truly pastoral farms anywhere.

The final food chain that Pollan follows is certainly the shortest and in many ways the oldest of the three. The task he sets for himself is to personally hunt, gather, or grow all the ingredients for a four-course meal for ten people (the last action, “grow,” keeps his food chain from being totally primal). He also intends to serve representatives of the three edible kingdoms: animal, plant, and fungus. To do this, city-raised Pollan must first learn to hunt and butcher game as well as to find mushrooms and distinguish the delicious from the deadly. Luckily, he befriends a Sicilian expat who introduces him to the floral, faunal, and fungal riches of the forests of Northern California. Pollan basically achieves his goal, although he ends up using for his diner party a couple of store-bought ingredients and a few things provided by friends. But in the process of assembling the meal he accomplishes a more abstract aim: being cognizant of everything that went into his dinner.

Reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma (more than a year ago, actually) was for me an eye-opening experience. It made me start really reading food labels and trying to eliminate artificial additives from my diet. I went on a crusade against high-fructose corn syrup, eliminating it from my apartment entirely — not for health reasons, but in moral opposition to the policies and processes that have made highly processed HFCS cheaper than natural cane sugar in the U.S. I changed my grocery shopping habits, and reading this book influenced, at least indirectly, Veronica’s and my decision to join a CSA farm this summer.

Aside from being very interesting and informative, Pollan’s writing is clear and his style is enjoyable. My only complaint about the book relates to his discussions of evolution early in the text. He writes of corn’s “act of evolutionary faith,” plants “hav[ing] always known… one of the surest paths to evolutionary success,” and recasts agriculture as “a brilliant (if unconscious) evolutionary strategy on the part of the plants and animals involved to get us to advance their interests.” Evolution doesn’t work that way; there is no planning, and there are no evolutionary goals as such, beyond the propagation of genetic material. That quibble aside, The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a great thought-provoking book, and I’d recommend it to anyone.