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60
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
52/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Mark Kurlansky
Publisher:
Patagonia
Date:
March 3, 2020
A tribute to a magnificent species whose cycles of life are entwined with every aspect of natureâfreshwater, saltwater, and landâand whose survival is inextricably tied to the survival of the planet.
What The Reviewers Say
It is a beautiful book, spangled throughout with stunning color photographs of a lovely fish, of pristine streams and landscapes. It’s a coffee-table book shrunk to shelf-size, but the images are pertinent and illuminating, and there is nothing throwaway about the text that surrounds them or about the recipes for salmon dishes from all over the world and past centuries.
More than an environmental book about overfishing, the text includes a comprehensive natural and cultural history about how the salmon impacts the world.
Kurlansky excels in this variegated research, and if you’re puzzled by the occasional omission (a 416-page salmon book, and not one mention of lox?), you’ll be amply supplied with fun fish facts for your next salmon barbecue. But while Kurlansky’s past books have been quirky cabinets of curiosities, Salmon contains more somber undercurrents.
Kurlansky covers all the bases, from life cycle and reproductive history to the fact that the salmon is particularly vulnerable precisely because it spends part of its life in salt water, part in fresh water.
