Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate

Cultural historian Mark Kurlansky, author of the bestselling books such as Cod, Salt, and Milk, turns his signature deep-dive lens to another focus, that of salmon, which until quite recently roamed abundantly wild throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Textbook in size yet lyrically reverent, Salmon is a four-hundred page ode to a fish “beautiful in its many phases; thrilling in its athleticism; poetic in its heroic and tragic life story.” With stunning images both modern and historical—such as a massive, sixty-four pound Atlantic salmon caught on a rod in the British Isles or a Tlakuit fisherman using a dip net on the Columbia in 1910—and even a few recipes for beer bread and chowder, Kurlansky covers seemingly every angle of river dams, fisheries, aquaculture, and piscine ecology. From Japan’s markets to Alaska’s Bristol Bay, Salmon reveals the long, fabled journey of a fish whose survival is intertwined with our own.