Cod by Mark Kurlansky

From The Week of June 13, 2010

There are books that make you cry, books that make you laugh, and books that change your life. And then there's Cod by Mark Kurlansky, a book that made me want to curl up and die from shame. Liberal guilt? Perhaps. But I wager you will feel it too when you sink your teeth into this biography of the fish that changed the world, the fish we've trawled nearly to extinction.

Before there was the Internet, and cellphones, and automobiles and airplanes, there were ships made of saltstained wood, ships manned by brave sailors who, armed with their gods and their superstitions, explored the medieval world. And the only way for many of them to feed themselves was Cod. As such, the ships often followed the waterways which suited Cod best, waterways which lead the Vikings and then the Spanish to discover the east coast of North America. Poor Christopher Columbus. Once heralded as the discoverer of this grand continent and now reduced to being the last of its many discoverers...

But while the history of Cod is a worthy component of this book, it's Mr. Kurlansky's chronicle of what we've done since to Cod hat startles and appalls. He does a wonderful job capturing the sheer, human stupidity of 19th and 20th century claims that Cod was as plentiful as any food source on Earth, that it couldn't possibly be a diminishing resource because of how many eggs the Cod lays each cycle. These colossal overestimations of Cod's reproductive powers lead to a policy of overfishing which nearly drove the North American supply into extinction. Mr. Kurlansky's recount of the short-sighted politics involved in disputes over Cod here and in Europe is a punch to the gut of anyone still possessing some shred of a belief in the goodness of government. And it should stand as a warning to us all of the damage humanity is capable of doing when self-interest is at stake.

Mr. Kurlansky has a keen eye for eccentric topics that demand to be captured by a historian's pen. That eye does not fail him with what is, for me, his most devastating work yet. Well-researched and well-argued. If we ever needed a reminder that we are not yet civilized, for all our boastful claims to the contrary, Cod is it. (4/5 Stars)