Penguin Books</br></br>Product Description</br></br><p><b>An unexpected energetic look at world history on sea and land from the  bestselling author of <i>Salt</i> and <i>The Basque History of the  World<br><br>Cod</i> </b>Mark Kurlanskys third work of  nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James  Beard Award<b></b> is the  biography of a single species of fish but it may as well be a world history  with this humble fish as its recurring main character. Cod it turns out is the  reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic  and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland  and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic  sagas? Cod frozen and dried in the frosty air then broken into pieces and  eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again sold  salted by the Basques an enigmatic people with a mysterious unlimited supply  of cod. As we make our way through the centuries of cod history we also find a  delicious legacy of recipes and the tragic story of environmental failure of  depleted fishing stocks where once their numbers were legendary. In this lovely??  thoughtful history?? Mark Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that  changed the world forever changed by the world's  folly?<br><br>??Every once in a while a  writer of particular skill takes a fresh?? seemingly improbable idea and tur