Most Popular Books by Mark Kurlansky

Describes how a small and impoverished region in the Dominican Republic grew to produce some of Major League Baseball''s greatest talents, citing the influence of sugar industry migrant workers and the role of race in transforming the sport.

What is What? Could it be that noted author Mark Kurlansky has written a very short, terrifically witty, deeply thought-provoking book entirely in the form of questions? A book that draws on philosophy, religion, literature, policy-indeed, all of civilization-to ask what may well be the twenty most important questions in human history? Or has he given us a really smart, impossibly amusing game of twenty questions? Kurlansky considers the work of Confucius, Plato, Shakespeare, Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, the Talmud, Charles de Gaulle, Virginia Woolf, and others, distilling the deep questions of life to their sparkling essence. What? supplies endless fodder for thoughtful conversation but also endless opportunity to ponder and be challenged by-and entertained by-these questions in refreshingly original ways. As Kurlansky says, In a world that seems devoid of absolute certainties, how can we make declarative statements? Without asking the questions, how will we ever get to the answers? With his striking black-and-white woodcut illustrations throughout, this handsome volume is a tour de force that packs a tremendous wallop in a deliciously compact package.

Profiles the Jewish-American baseball player who, in 1934, risked his chance to beat Babe Ruth''s home run record by sitting out a game on Yom Kippur, and describes his impact on Jewish-American history.

Written by the author of The Basque History of the World, this book exhibits the author''s affection for two rocky coastlines facing each other, Massachusetts on one side of the Atlantic and Euskadi, Basqueland, on the other. It is a bilingual book in English and Euskara, the ancient Basque tongue, which is the oldest living European language.

A tribute to a magnificent species whose cycles of life are entwined with every aspect of nature -- freshwater, saltwater, and land -- and whose survival is inextricably tied to the survival of the planet.

All-new stories about the food we share, love, and fight over from the national bestselling author of Cod and Salt. In these linked stories, Mark Kurlansky reveals the bond that can hold people together, tear them apart, or make them become vegan: food. Through muffins or hot dogs, an indigenous Alaskan fish soup, a bean curd Thanksgiving turkey or potentially toxic crème brulee, a rotating cast of characters learns how to honor the past, how to realize you''re not in love with someone any more, and how to forgive. These women and men meet and eat and love, leave and drink and in the end, come together in Seattle as they are as inextricably linked with each other as they are with the food they eat and the wine they drink. Kurlansky brings a keen eye and unerring sense of humanity to these stories. And throughout, his love and knowledge of food shows just how important a role what we eat plays in our lives.

Lonely Planet: The world''s leading travel guide publisher* Life-changing food adventures around the world. From bat on the island of Fais to chicken on a Russian train to barbecue in the American heartland, from mutton in Mongolia to couscous in Morocco to tacos in Tijuana - on the road, food nourishes us not only physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually too. It can be a gift that enables a traveller to survive, a doorway into the heart of a tribe, or a thread that weaves an indelible tie; it can be awful or ambrosial - and sometimes both at the same time. Celebrate the riches and revelations of food with this 38-course feast of true tales set around the world. Features stories by Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, Mark Kurlansky, Matt Preston, Simon Winchester, Stefan Gates, David Lebovitz, Matthew Fort, Tim Cahill, Jan Morris and Pico Iyer. Edited by Don George. About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world''s leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet''s mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers'' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category ''Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.'' - New York Times ''Lonely Planet. It''s on everyone''s bookshelves; it''s in every traveller''s hands. It''s on mobile phones. It''s on the Internet. It''s everywhere, and it''s telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.'' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013 Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

Una mirada periodística al año que conmocionó al mundo. Para algunos éste fue el año del sexo, las drogas y el rock and roll, pero 1968 fue mucho más, fue considerado el año de el mayo francés, la primavera de Praga, los disturbios en Estados Unidos, la lucha por los derechos civiles de los negros, la revuelta de los universitarios de la costa oeste, la liberación de la mujer, el principio del fin de la Unión Soviética, los asesinatos de Bobby Kennedy y Luther King, la guerra del Vietnam, las huelgas obreras en Varsovia, los movimientos estudiantiles en la España franquista...Un recorrido a través de la política, la música, los jóvenes, la guerra, la economía o los medios de comunicación de este año convulso, cuyos acontecimientos han marcado el curso del mundo moderno. Todo ello contado con su peculiar estilo pedagógico, por medio de anécdotas o análisis profundos.

Joel Bloom chronicles his life experiences during the 1960''s which eventually lead him to oppose the war in Vietnam and to flee to Canada rather than be forced to kill Vietnamese.

"¿Qué tienen en común Rico Carty, Alfredo Griffin, Pedro Guerrero, George Bell, Julio Franco, Juan Samuel, Sammy Sosa, Alfonso Soriano, y Robinson Canó? Que todos proceden de San Pedro de Macorís, la pequeña ciudad azucarera en la República Dominicana. ¿Una coincidencia? Difícilmente". -National Public Radio Al final de la temporada de 2010, más de ochenta y seis jóvenes y hombres de la empobrecida ciudad de San Pedro de Macorís jugaban en las Grandes Ligas -lo que significa que uno de cada seis dominicanos de las Grandes Ligas vinieron de los mismos equipos locales de los ingenios azucareros, y acudieron en masa a los Estados Unidos en busca de oportunidades, de riqueza, y de una vida mejor. Pero este viaje es también una crónica del racismo en el béisbol, de la necesidad de cambiar las costumbres sociales del deporte en la República Dominicana y en los Estados Unidos, y de las historias personales de los hombres que han buscado escapar de la pobreza jugando béisbol. En Las Estrellas Orientales, Mark Kurlansky revela el amor de dos países por un deporte, y descubre unos significados más profundos sobre lugar y identidad, tenacidad y supervivencia, colonialismo y capitalismo, pero especialmente sobre el béisbol.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Salt examines the intersections between his life and Ernest Hemingway’s in this mix of travel memoir and history. By a series of coincidences, Mark Kurlansky’s life has always been intertwined with Ernest Hemingway’s legend, starting with being in Idaho the day of Hemingway’s death. The Importance of Not Being Ernest explores the intersections between Hemingway’s and Kurlansky’s lives, resulting in creative accounts of two inspiring writing careers. Travel the world with Mark Kurlansky and Ernest Hemingway in this personal memoir, where Kurlansky details his ten years in Paris and his time as a journalist in Spain—both cities important to Hemingway’s adventurous life and prolific writing. Paris, Basque Country, Havana and Idaho.Get to know the extraordinary people he met there—those who had also fallen under the Hemingway spell, including a Vietnam veteran suffering from the same syndrome the author did, two winners of the Key West Hemingway look-alike contest, and the man in Idaho who took Hemingway hunting and fishing. In The Importance of Not Being Ernest, find: A memoir full of entertaining and illuminative stories Little-known historical facts about Hemingway’s life Anecdotes about those who suffer from what the Kurlansky calls “hemitis” Readers of Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America, or The Boys will love The Importance of Not Being Ernest. Praise for The Importance of Not Being Ernest “An absolute delight! Full of personality, Kurlansky’s book will enchant history, literature, and Hemingway fans alike.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Geschiedenis van de winning van en handel in zout, vanaf de vroegste tijden tot heden.

An untold story of the Civil War Era: pacifists in Boston who led the fight to end slavery without war. Has there ever been good violence or a good war? The American Civil War is likely considered to be so since there seemed to be no alternative. Or was there? Before the war, Bostonian abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison correctly predicted that fighting would not bring about real freedom and justice. If emancipation came about through violence, he believed, it would take at least a century for Black people to get their rights. As we now know, it has taken even longer than that. Here is the story of Garrison and other abolitionists, Black and white, male and female, who advocated a peaceful end to slavery and the start of human rights for Black people. The Boston Clique, as they were called, were victorious in persuading their fellow Bostonians to end Jim Crow laws on Massachusetts'' railroads. Persuasion was, these pacificists believed, the only means to lasting change. In these pages, we find Frederick Douglass and lesser-known Black abolitionists, William Nell and Charles Remond. We meet leading feminists of the nineteenth century Lydia Maria Child, Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Additional key figures include Adin Balou, William Ladd, and Noah Worcester whose voices for nonviolence impacted Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King. Still, if it meant a faster end to the horrors of slavery, wasn''t violence the answer? In time, pacificist abolitionists such as Douglass and John Brown came to believe the entire system in the South needed to be overthrown and that could only happen through the shedding of blood. Time may now provide a different perspective. While history has little memory of abolitionists, and even less for pacifists, nothing can be learned from that which is not remembered. What if the Civil War had never have been fought? Might we now live in a world of far greater justice and peace? What does this mean today as we still pursue "righteous" violence? This is the story of a road not taken.

Will most of the major fisheries of the world be exhausted by 2048, as has been claimed? Have the number of large fish in the ocean decreased by 90 per cent over the past 50 years, as has been asserted by a respected scientist? Are 60 per cent of the fish species studied by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation either fully exploited or depleted, as one of their reports attests? Fishing at sea, an ancient trade and a way of life that has defined coastal towns throughout history, may be coming to an end. The culture and traditions of coastal Britain and of seagoing nations everywhere are now threatened with extinction. In his most important book yet, Mark Kurlansky - the celebrated author of Cod, Salt and The Big Oyster - explores the fate of our oceans and the decline of our most ancient coastal enterprise. The Last Fish Tale sends up a timely distress flare but one which brilliantly illuminates a colourful, exuberant and poignant landscape, from Newlyn in Cornwall to Gloucester in Massachusetts - a fishing village first settled by Englishmen in the early 1600s. The result is a cultural, economic, environmental and culinary bouillabaisse - the most compelling fish tale of our time.

From 1626 until pollution finally destroyed the beds in the 1920s, N.Y. was a city known for its oysters, especially in the late 1800s, when Europe and America enjoyed a decades-long oyster craze. Travelers to N.Y. were also keen to experience the famous N.Y. oyster houses. While some were known for their elegance, due to a long-standing belief in the aphrodisiac quality of oysters, they were often associated with prostitution. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in N.Y., he could not conceal his eagerness to find and experience the fabled oyster cellars of N.Y. City¿s slums. This is the story of a city and of an international trade. Filled with cultural, social and culinary insight, as well as recipes, maps, drawings and photos.

Simplified Chinese edition of 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky (1948), an American journalist and writer of general interest non-fiction, whose Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea (2006) was the non-fiction winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Pour elle, on a déclaré des guerres, déclenché des révolutions. Elle a été la base de l''alimentation de nations entières. Des économies en ont dépendu. Elle a accompagné la colonisation de l''Amérique du Nord. Pour les millions d''êtres qu''elle a fait vivre, elle a incarné un trésor plus précieux que l''or. La morue a ainsi joué un rôle fascinant et essentiel dans l''histoire du monde. Son épopée s''étend sur mille ans et quatre continents. Les Vikings la poursuivirent à travers l''Atlantique. Les Basques en firent commerce dès le Moyen Age. Elle fut l''emblème des vaisseaux de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et de Terre-Neuve comme des barques de pêcheurs côtiers, des élégants schooners comme des navires-usines labourant l''Atlantique. Des ports de l''Islande, de la Scandinavie, de l''Angleterre, aux rivages du Brésil et de l''Afrique occidentale, Mark Kurlansky ressuscite cette étonnante aventure. Sans oublier les recettes d''antan et d''aujourd''hui, il évoque les enjeux scientifiques et historiques, et finalement le drame d''un poisson, aujourd''hui au bord de l''extinction.