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sohva's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.0
Interesting, but somewhat repetitive. Especially the early history of salt seemed to repeat the story "someone found salt, someone taxed it" in a few different forms, and I got a bit bored. That is of course a consequence of the history happening that way, but it still wasn't always that interesting to read.
robfarren's review
1.0
I put this down after about 100 pages...it was so boring. Who needs dozens of recipes for how fish and other foods were salted in ancient cultures? One would have sufficed and kept the narrative moving along. There's actually a children's picture book version of this called "The Story of Salt" that you're better off reading, if you've got 8 minutes to spare.
legallyde's review
4.0
Overall this book was very fascinating. As a student of history, I had no idea that so many of the events I’ve studied over the years were really about control over salt! That being said, at times the writing got a bit ponderous. Some chapters could’ve been edited and shortened without losing any important information.
roseleaf24's review
3.0
This got a little long and slow at times, but overall, a fascinating look at world history. This book traces the history of salt, extremely commonplace now, but once a main source of commerce. It's incredible how instrumental a role salt played in points in history we are familiar with. Rome, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, Ghandi.
aggressive_nostalgia's review against another edition
I’m honestly really surprised and disappointed by how boring I found this. I suspect the problem is less the content and more the style/format – this feels a bit like it should be a series of articles rather than a book. Kurlansky often gets very technical, sometimes unnecessarily so in my view, which can really dilute the “story” aspect of the history.
bea_reads78's review
2.0
A history of the production, trade, and use of salt around the world with a focus on political and economic impacts. Though it is popular history, not academic, I wish there were footnotes because many bold claims are stated without context or evidence, and when I looked some of them up online I found there is considerable academic disagreement (especially in early sections of the book on archaeology, ancient history, through the Middle Ages). The author also does not attempt to pull out any greater themes, instead organizing the book by region and chronicling the progression of salt production, which is pretty dry for 450 pages. Almost total lack of information on Africa.