The Story of Salt

The book suggested for this book report is “The story of salt” written by the author Mark Kurlansky. The book in whole educates people about the significance of a simple element “salt”. This book is not just for the adults but also for the teenagers and the primary level students. This book introduces the readers with the common facts that had been off-beat. This book is reviewed on a large scale and recommended by many of its readers. About the author: The author of this book Mark Kurlansky is well-known among the book lovers.

He has been awarded with the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing. His many writing includes “A biography of fish which changed the view. And this is an achievement in itself, if a book writer really changes one’s perspective towards any subject (The Random House Group, 2009). The most common feature in his books is salt. Just for the sake of knowing the facts about salt and how does this substance can really change the contemporary picture of the world, he travelled to many countries in the world.

The countries he visited are China, Middle East, and Africa. Mark Kurlansky writing pieces includes, “The big oyster”, “The last fish tale”, “1968 (the year when the world was rocked) and many more” (Random House, INC, 2009). These writing pieces by the author have focused the food and greatly salt. In this paper will discuss his book “The story of the salt” About the book: This book deals with the ubiquitous and such a simple substance, salt. How salt helped the civilizations to evolve and how it bring change in the economy in the World.

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Salt is the substance which can make a country become the most powerful. In this book the significance of the salt tells all the facts and secrets has been revealed. Salt is most important to superpowers like America to control the world. This book reveals that how important salt is for the human body. Illustrations: This book contains many vibrant, attention-grabbing and supportive illustrations with text which made it easy for the readers to understand the importance of the simple substance salt.

There are illustrations symbolizing the different civilization and the use of the salt in their era. Main Idea: At first when salt was used in the meals with meat and other types of meat (white meat, beef) but its industrial use got raise when salt was discovered as the best preservative. And that’s when the use of the salt became more common. Almost every state’s economy is greatly affected (in raise or loss) by the frozen food because of the new trends of intake of food. America in particular has the industry of frozen food selling on the highest score (Kurlansky, 2006).

The question that arises in our minds is that if the salt was not discovered as a preservative, then how it would be the state of the frozen food cultured economies? This shows the evident importance of the salt in the economic affairs of the state. Did you ever thought about when using the table salt? In this book Mark provided records of the first use of salt different countries. For example, China started its production for salt nearly 8000 B. C before. Mark introduces to the foodie culture of China that they sprinkle salt rightly on their food (Kurlansky, 2006).

This book also deals with many famous bodies from the history involved in the history of salt. For example, Gandhi was the one who broke the law of Britain regarding salt which damaged their trade of salt. Another example from the book is of Clarence Birdseye. He is the biggest name in the market of frozen foods (Kurlansky, 2006). This book also tells about the phenomenon of colonialism which was greatly affected or being revolutionized by the salt. The salt trade helped those states which had their salt sources on the list.

And when war broke out, the colonists had to find their mass of salt in order to track back their colonialism (Kurlansky, 2006). Mark in this book takes us back to the beginning of the time when prior to civilizations, men as a vagrant and rolling stone use to wonder in the world to find the salt masses which was and is necessary for the human bodies. In the search men discovered many other natural resources so titling that salt was the reason behind the discoveries of world’s many important land recourses (Kurlansky, 2006).

This book holds record from all the international history as well as political history of different states and how these states gathered their sources on the basis of mass of salts. Salt is called as the key for the explorations era. Salt was used by many countries for different purpose. For example, how the people of Egypt used salt as a preserver for keeping the bodies of their kings and emperors fresh and preserved. Salt was greatly consumed for this reason (Kurlansky, 2006). Ketchup is commonly used with every food, especially in the regions America, Europe and Mexico.

A very interesting point to note from the book is that how salt helped making the ketchup. Because Mark was a food writer too, he included ketchup in a very witty style in his book with the right illustrations to go with it. Therefore reading the text from the book it is quite evident that choosing such a topic and to describe it in such a good way really help him deserves the best outcome of the hard work. This book “The Story of Salt” is the best seller by Mark. Moreover the author’s goal specifically in this book is to educate people about the little facts that are of less importance to them. And he is successful in this regard.

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