New Releases by Mark Kurlansky

Tet-Offensive in Vietnam, Antikriegsbewegung, Prager Frühling, Rassenunruhen in Amerika und Notstandsgesetze in Deutschland, Pariser Mai und Demonstrationen polnischer und italienischer, mexikanischer und japanischer Studenten. Abbie Hoffman in New York,

Presents the history of salt, from the many ways it''s gathered from the earth and sea, to its many uses throughout history, from ancient times to Gandhi''s famous Salt March.

Written by the author of The Basque History of the World, this book exhibits the author''s affection for two rocky coastlines facing each other, Massachusetts on one side of the Atlantic and Euskadi, Basqueland, on the other. It is a bilingual book in English and Euskara, the ancient Basque tongue, which is the oldest living European language.

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.

Pour elle, on a déclaré des guerres, déclenché des révolutions. Elle a été la base de l''alimentation de nations entières. Des économies en ont dépendu. Elle a accompagné la colonisation de l''Amérique du Nord. Pour les millions d''êtres qu''elle a fait vivre, elle a incarné un trésor plus précieux que l''or. La morue a ainsi joué un rôle fascinant et essentiel dans l''histoire du monde. Son épopée s''étend sur mille ans et quatre continents. Les Vikings la poursuivirent à travers l''Atlantique. Les Basques en firent commerce dès le Moyen Age. Elle fut l''emblème des vaisseaux de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et de Terre-Neuve comme des barques de pêcheurs côtiers, des élégants schooners comme des navires-usines labourant l''Atlantique. Des ports de l''Islande, de la Scandinavie, de l''Angleterre, aux rivages du Brésil et de l''Afrique occidentale, Mark Kurlansky ressuscite cette étonnante aventure. Sans oublier les recettes d''antan et d''aujourd''hui, il évoque les enjeux scientifiques et historiques, et finalement le drame d''un poisson, aujourd''hui au bord de l''extinction.

“A charming fish tale and a pretty gift for your favorite seafood cook or fishing monomaniac. But in the last analysis, it’s a bitter ecological fable for our time.” –Los Angeles Times An unexpected, energetic look at world history via the humble cod fish from the bestselling author of Salt and The Basque History of the World 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 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

A richly detailed portrait of the individual countries and peoples of the Caribbean ; brings to life a society and culture often kept hidden from foreigners--the arts, history, politics, economics, and the vivid day-to-day lives of its citizens.