Many of you know I’m beefing up on my knowledge of the history of New York City. So I was pleased to find out that Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, published a book last year about the history of New York City, as seen through the oyster.
This book works great as a quick overview of the history of the city. When the Dutch arrived, the Indians were already harvesting and eating the oysters in the estuaries and rivers surrounding Manhattan. The natives piled up big heaps of oyster shells, called oyster middens, created wampum from the shells by drilling holes in them and hanging them from string, and even covered their dead in the shells.
I don’t know if Kurlansky intended this, but I gained a greater appreciation for American culture after reading the book. For the first time, I was able to see the roots of many of the American traditions and practices that are known the world over. Many people think Americans are uncultured cowboys who eat too much. This book uncovers the roots of these cultural descriptions.
Through the course of the book, I saw how New York City changed from a frontier town to one of the greatest cities on the planet. At first, NYC emulated European culture and cooking, trying to prove to the world that she could hold her own as a city. But as time progressed, the roles began a flip flop. Soon it was the French and British who were trying to emulate many of the traditions and recipes of the New Yorkers.
Speaking of recipes, Kurlansky’s penchant for antiquated recipes on how to cook oysters was the least interesting part of the book for me. Maybe it’s because I’m really not interested in reading instruction manuals or cookbooks for pleasure. But if I were researching how oysters were prepared and eaten through the ages, this book would have plenty of interesting tidbits. Truth to tell, I skipped most of these. However, I guess it really wouldn’t be a Kurlansky book without them.
Overall, this book was very enjoyable, a good read, and very recommended. Incidentally, it provided several small historical details that I was able to include in my latest short story. The long bibliography in the back has already provided more books for me to research, including a book published in the 1920s called The Gangs of New York.