Synopses & Reviews
Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled.
For centuries New York was famous for its oysters, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city's economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalves were Gotham's most celebrated export, a staple food for the wealthy, the poor, and tourists alike, and the primary natural defense against pollution for the citys congested waterways.
Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the island hunting ground of the Lenape Indians to the death of the oyster beds and the rise of America's environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan's Gilded Age dining chambers.
Kurlansky brings characters vividly to life while recounting dramatic incidents that changed the course of New York history. Here are the stories behind Peter Stuyvesant's peg leg and Robert Fulton's "Folly"; the oyster merchant and pioneering African American leader Thomas Downing; the birth of the business lunch at Delmonico's; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of the highest-paid newspaper writers in the city; even "Diamond" Jim Brady, who we discover was not the gourmand of popular legend.
With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.
Review
"In his portrait of the once-famous oyster beds of New York Harbor, Kurlansky beautifully illustrates food's ability to connect us deeply to our particular place in the world, and shows how our nourishment is so vitally tied to the health of the natural world." Alice Waters
Review
"Mark Kurlansky has done it again. The Big Oyster is a zesty love song to a bivalve and a cityintelligent, informative, and impossible to put down." Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Awardwinning author of In the Heart of the Sea
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"The Big Oyster proves that it is possible for a skilled researcher to tell the history of New York its wealth, excitement, greed, destructiveness and filth through the history of a single creature." Elizabeth Royte, the New York Times Book Review
Review
"Kurlansky also lives in New York, and the book seems suffused with his pleasure in exploring the city....People have used the material here before...but not as a means for enlivening the past through the lenses of indulgence, prosperity, marine bounty and night life." Los Angeles Times
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"[A] sharply told history of a shellfish and its impact on the evolution of a great city....Kurlansky [mixes] hard science with glittering tidbits." San Francisco Chronicle
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"Kurlansky's oyster-steeped approach turns out to be fun and accessible....Food enthusiasts and American history buffs will enjoy The Big Oyster most." Cleveland Plain Dealer
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"[T]he book's main point is made clear in a disturbing account of how untreated sewage...destroyed the oyster beds and...threatened the health of New Yorkers." Dallas Morning News
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"It may surprise non-New Yorkers who think of the city's waterfront as the place where police fish out corpses, but the surrounding estuary provided a perfect habitat for shellfish that became the envy of the world." Booklist
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"Kurlansky has produced a tasty mixture of history and analysis, larded with illustrations. The result will appeal to a wide range of appetites." Library Journal
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"Kurlansky serves up the heady story with trenchant prose and a knack for curious insight....A compelling, highly readable treat, whether you partake of Ostreidae or not." Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Awardwinning author of 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, Salt: A World History, The Basque History of the World, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, The White Man in the Tree (a collection of short stories), and several other books. Boogaloo on Second Avenue is his first novel. He lives in New York City.