Imprint: Vintage
Published: 05/04/2007
ISBN: 9780099477594
Length: 336 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm
Weight: 234g
RRP: £10.99
When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626 he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, nearby Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770.
From the Minuit purchase until pollution finally destroyed the beds in the 1920s, New York was a city known for its oysters, especially in the late 1800s, when Europe and America enjoyed a decades-long oyster craze. In a dubious endorsement, William Makepeace Thackeray said that eating a New York oyster was like eating a baby.
Travellers to New York were also keen to experience the famous New York oyster houses. While some were known for their elegance, due to a longstanding belief in the aphrodisiac quality of oysters, they were often associated with prostitution. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in New York, he could not conceal his eagerness to find and experience the fabled oyster cellars of New York City's slums.
The Big Oyster 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 photographs - this is history at its most engrossing, entertaining and delicious.
Imprint: Vintage
Published: 05/04/2007
ISBN: 9780099477594
Length: 336 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm
Weight: 234g
RRP: £10.99
Kurlansky's great ability is to chose a single element as a prism through which to view the development or degeneration of culture; in this book he takes his readers from the 16th century to the present day, encompassing biology, commerce, the politics of race, history, literature, and, of course, gourmandise
A diligent researcher and a terrific storyteller...quirky, engrossing narrative
A unique perspective
Fascinating... Kurlansky's portrait of that vanished age is absolutely engrossing
Packed with interest