The Cod - wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been triggered by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious that gold. This book spans 1,000 years and four continents. From the Vikings to Clarence Birdseye, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs and fisherman, whose lives have been interwoven with this prolific fish. He chronicles the cod wars of the 16th and 20th centuries. He blends in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages to the present. In a story that brings world history and human passions into captivating focus, he shows how the most profitable fish in history is today faced with extinction.

Cod : A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

Business & Money

Mark Kurlansky

Economics

Random House]

It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels outside his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighbourhood. While he tries to decide whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry chef whose parents may or may not have been Nazis, his father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighbourhood. With its ensemble cast of unforgettable characters, Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue is a comedy of cultures about the old and the new, about Latinos, Jews, Sicilians and Germans. It's about struggling to hold onto life in a rapidly changing world, about food and sex and about how our lives are shaped by love and guilt.

Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt and Music

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Vintage Books

The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare. According to this view, all the important ideas and significant changes of humankind occurred as part of an effort to win one violent, bloody conflict or another. This approach to history is only one of many examples of how societies promote warfare and glorify violence. But there have always been a few who have refused to fight. Governments have long regarded this minority as a danger to society and have imprisoned and abused them and encouraged their persecution. This was true of those who refused Europe's wars, who refused to fight for their king, who refused to fight for Napoleon as well as against him. It was true of Virginia Woolf's sister Vanessa and her husband Clive Bell - outcasts in rural Sussex because they opposed World War I at a time when the British socialist movement described a bayonet as a weapon with a worker on each end. It was true of the first American draft dodger, a Menonite who believed in American independence but believed it was wrong to use violence and rejected the call of his local militia. It was true of the many abolitionists who had dedicated their lives to stopping slavery but refused to fight in the Civil War. Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and, most impressively, the Menonites and the Quakers - all have passages in their major teachings rejecting warfare as immoral. In this brilliant exploration of pacifism, these points of view are discussed alongside such diverse non-violence theorists as Tolstoy, Shelley, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Aldous Huxley, Erasmus, Confucius and Lao Tse to show how many modern ideas - such as a united Europe, the United Nations, and the abolition of slavery - originated in such non-violence movements.

Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea

History

Vintage Books USA

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A witty romp through history uses the codfish as its main character, showing how cod became the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, while also questioning how depleted codfish stocks might affect the world's future, given their impact on the past.

Science & Math

Earth Sciences

PRENTICE/HALL

Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

An unexpected, energetic look at world history on sea and land from the bestselling author of Salt and The Basque History of the World Cod, Mark Kurlansky’s third work of nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James Beard Award, is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod, frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. As we make our way through the centuries of cod history, we also find a delicious legacy of recipes, and the tragic story of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once their numbers were legendary. In this lovely, thoughtful history, Mark Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that changed the world forever changed by the world's folly? “Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish.” –David McCullough, author of The Wright Brothers and 1776

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Penguin??Books

Jonathan Cape Ltd.

The Basque History of The World

The Basque History of the World

Europe

JONATHAN CAPE.

It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels outside his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighbourhood. In between paralyzing bouts of claustrophobia, Nathan wonders whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry maker whose parents may or may not have been Nazis. His father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighbourhood. With its ensemble cast of unforgettable characters, Boogaloo on Second Avenue is a comedy of cultures about the old and the new, about Latinos, Jews, Sicilians and Germans. It's about struggling to hold onto life in a rapidly changing world, about food and sex and about how our lives are shaped by love and guilt.

Boogaloo on Second Avenue

Vintage, UK

When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626 - his first New York real estate killing - he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, nearby Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770. From the Minuit purchase until centuries of pollution finally destroyed the beds in the 1920s, New York was a city known for its oysters: the 'Blue Points,' still produced by the Long Island town of the same name; the 'Rockaways' and 'East Rivers'; 'Sounds' from Staten Island; several Manhattan varieties, and even those from a celebrated area by what is now LaGuardia Airport. For centuries, New York was world famous as an oyster centre, especially in the late 1800s, when Europe and America enjoyed a decades-long oyster craze. In Europe, New York oysters were famous for both their size and durability. In a dubious endorsement, William Makepeace Thackeray said that eating a New York oyster was like eating a baby. When travellers visited New York, they not only wanted to eat the Coral oysters, they wanted to experience the famous New York oyster houses. While some houses were known for their elegance, the infamous slums such as Five-Points were notoriously disreputable. Due to a longstanding belief in the aphrodisiac quality of oysters, they were often associated with prostitution. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in New York, he could not conceal his eagerness to find and experience the fabled oyster cellars of New York City's slums. "The Big Oyster" is the history of the city as told through its celebrated bivalve. It is a gastronomic history revealing four centuries of culinary evolution and food trends in a city that has always been a gastronomic trendsetter. But it is also an economic history, examining the enormous impact of transportation innovations - the Erie Canal, the railroad, and clipper ship - that completely changed urban living and food and also accounted for the growth of a thriving international oyster trade.

Big Oyster: New York in the World

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare. According to this view, all the important ideas and significant changes of humankind occured as part of an effort to win one violent, bloody conflict or another. But there have always been a few who refused to fight. Following the grand sweep of history from Confucius to Tolstoy, Erasmus to Gandhi, bestselling author Mark Kurlansky traces pacifism and its proponents to show how many modern ideas, a united Europe, the United Nations, and the abolition of slavery - originated in non-violence movements.

Non-Violence : The History of a Dangerous Idea

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