Cod

A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

By: Mark Kurlansky

Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson

Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

The innocuous cod has been the subject of international wars, national diets, economies, livelihoods, and health in general. Mark Kurlansky approaches the cod with his love of food and food culture, and leaps into history, folklore, and even recipes dating to the fourteenth century and forward. This famous fish spurred interest in the development of North America, and caused a whole nation of people to jump into fishing and ocean exploration. Including word origins, this audiobook also contains recipes and uses for all kinds of cod.

Enjoy Mark Kurlansky's books? Listen to an interview with the author on To the Best of Our Knowlege.

©1997 Mark Kurlansky (P)2002 New Millennium Audio, All Rights Reserved

Critic reviews

"Every once in a while a writer of particular skills takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight...No one who reads this charming tale will ever think the same of either the fish or the history." (David McCullough, author of John Adams)
"History filtered through the gills of the fish trade." (The New York Times Book Review)

I believe in Cod

This is a wonderfully written book. Mark Kurlansky’s protagonist could be seen as just a rather boring fish. But he demonstrates that this fish has been in the middle of great struggles, political battles, economic experiments and even wars. He throws a net around a thousand disparate facts and hauls in a fascinating catch.

I was less enthused by the narration. Whilst it was a solid performance I found the accents forced, even caricature like.

Chapters begin with a recipe, a nice technique that I quite enjoyed in the book “Like water for chocolate”. But I read that book, and listened to this one. It leaves me convinced that recipes are meant to be read, not heard.

Sad Story of a delicious fish

Not just a fish story. An interesting history of a very old industry with a very bleak future. I remember when cod was plentiful and inexpensive. Now I know why it is no longer on the menu. (I did skip the recipes at the end.)

Now, to find a supply of salt cod ...

Well recorded and full of surprises and discoveries. I'd be surpised if anybody could read this and say, on finishing it, "yeah, so what, I knew all that." Bet you didn't. A charmingly told tale that, by the end, had me searching the Internet to find a source for ordering some high-quality salt cod. Some complain about the "recipes" in the audio book -- obviously of less value than in the print version -- but even if you never cook and don't like the taste of fish you will likely find this his/story fascinating.

Cod: Tthe Fish that Changed the World

In a this world, the destiny of which seems to be in the hands of those with the greatest lust for riches and/or power, it was fascinating to see how a seemingly insignificent item had such an effect on the course of history.

Interesting and entertaining

I enjoyed this book quite a lot, both the interesting story, facts, and even recipes, as well as the great narration. There is documentation of greed in the drastic over-fishing, sorrow in the demise of the great size and schools of this magnificent fish, and fascination at how people learned to eat cod in so many ways and the so many parts if the fish! NOTHING of the creature is lost.
I am definitely going to read more non-fiction books by this author!

A Fun Book

This book catapulted me into a new understanding of the major role of cod in world history. The topic almost seems absurd to begin with, but the author makes a very convincing case. A sub-theme of the book is the sad tale of how this magnificent fish is now virtually wiped out because of over-fishing. If you are looking for a book that is amusing and yet informative, this is an ideal choice. The end of the book is composed of one cod recipe after another, which you could profitably skip; it gets old after awhile. The reading is quite well done.

Mostly history of New Foundland

With regret I can only give it 3 stars. Narration is spot on, but the story could be more gripping. Author has chosen New Foundland fishing industry as a pivot. I couldn't have cared less about it. I'd love to hear more about Iceland, Greenland, Norway, UK and Spain. Some information is not completely accurate. I actually know most of the details of wars for fisheries between Iceland and UK and was surprised to hear this super interesting chapter in history has gotten superficial treatment. It has been mentioned in the book, that there were no casualties in that, but there have been on both sides - notably an old Icelandic engineer, that died after one of the rammings. Nothing has been said about how Iceland used it's leverage in NATO over UK to win all of those conflicts (with some help from US). But what I hasn't been highlighted enough was cod itself. there was some information about the fish, but not very detailed. Apart from that the book is well put together. If you're interested in New Foundland, plenty of recipes (which you're probably not going to use) and some international context then absolutely go for it.

Great book for cod lovers

Great information and very interesting recipes including from Juan José Castillo
Restaurant La Nicolasa San Sebastián Spain were I did some training on 1989 .

Interesting

Informational, sometimes boring. Would be better read than listened to.

It's really 2 books; 1 good, 1 bad

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The book's telling of the history of fishing for cod off the Atlantic coast of Canada and New England is almost always interesting and at times fascinating. For instance Kurlansky makes a convincing case that Basque fishermen were catching cod on the Grand Banks and drying them on Newfoundland's shores way before Columbus set sail for the Indies. But Kurlansky spends as much time writing about cod cuisine as he does on the history cod fishing (or maybe it just seems that way), and there are very few topics that interest me less than the details of, say, how cod was cooked in 16th century Portugal.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

For the audio book version, delete all that how-to-cook-cod stuff.