Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Thursday, August 6 2009.

• A delightful romp through history with all its economic forces laid bare, Cod 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 te fate of the universe. Here--for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert--is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Tuesday, July 21 2009.

• reordered the contributors.
• 1 : Mark Kurlansky:

Peiyu W edited the quotations of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Sunday, July 19 2009.

• Added a quotation: “Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it”

Shelfari edited the contributors of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Sunday, July 19 2009.

• Added a contributor: Mark Kurlansky: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Thursday, July 16 2009.

• A medieval fisherman is said to have hauled up a three-foot-long cod, which was common enough at the time.