Salt: Grain of Life (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) - Hardcover

Laszlo, Pierre

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231121989 ISBN 13: 9780231121989

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Salt Through the ages, salt has conferred status, preserved foods, and mingled in the blood, sweat, and tears of humanity. Mixing literary analysis, history, biology, physics, economics, art history, political science, chemistry, and linguistics, this book talks about the everyday substance that rocked the world and brings zest to the ordinary. Full description

About this title

Review:

A weirdly compelling blend of chemical analysis and anecdotal history.--Teresa Weaver "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "

I have been darting, delightedly, from one section to another--from Salting Herring to extreme halophiles, to Spectroscopy. It is a marvellous mosaic leavened with great charm and lightness.--Oliver Sacks

Takes us through the astonishing history of this substance with lightness as well as learning... [his] observations are fascinating.--Roy Herbert "NewScientist.com "

Rich in fact and analysis...takes the seemingly trivial subject of salt and implies that it is not merely an essential element of life but that it is perhaps the veritable motor of human history.--Gastronomica

Offers a rich pickle barrel of facts and anecdotes about salt.--London Review of Books

Readers will never again think of salt... in the same simple way.--The Washington Post Book World

A breathless read... because of the suprising appeal and importance of the subject itself.--Houston Chronicle

History, chemistry, physics, economics, anthropology, technology... linguistics, art history... and culinary arts are all explored in this wonderful, multicultural Renaissance approach to the subject of salt.... Salt is not just plain, and this book is a pleasure to read.--Choice

A slender, impish concoction.... To say this is a quirky book is like saying Rita Hayworth was an okay-looking gal.... Calvinesque in many ways--filled with lightness, delightful tangents, postmodernist hijinks.--The Globe and Mail

The distinction between the scientific and the nonscientific blurs. One becomes astonished that every day one samples a chemical with such a rich cultural aura--which is to say the wager by the author is a success.--Le Monde

Synopsis:

For the sake of salt, Rome created a system of remuneration (from which we get the word "salary"), nomads domesticated the camel, the Low Countries revolted against their Spanish oppressors, and Gandhi marched against the tyranny of the British. Through the ages, salt has conferred status, preserved foods, and mingled in the blood, sweat, and tears of humanity. Today, chefs of haute cuisine covet it in its most exotic forms -- underground salt deposits, Hawaiian black lava salt, glittery African crystals, and pink Peruvian salt from the sea carried in bricks on the backs of llamas.From proverbs to technical arguments, from anecdotes to examples of folklore, chemist and philosopher Pierre Laszlo takes us through the kingdom of "white gold." With "enthusiasm and freshness" ( Le Monde) he mixes literary analysis, history, anthropology, biology, physics, economics, art history, political science, chemistry, ethnology, and linguistics to create a full body of knowledge about the everyday substance that rocked the world and brings zest to the ordinary. Laszlo explains the history behind Morton Salt's slogan "When it rains, it pours!" and looks into the plight of the salt miner, as well as spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance.

Salt is a tour de force about a chemical compound that is one of the very foundations of civilization.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0231121989
• ISBN 13: 9780231121989
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 220