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The Big Oyster - Mark Kurlansky

By Mark Kurlansky

Release Date: 2006-02-28

Genre: U.S. History

4 (43 ratings)
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Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled.

For centuries New York was famous for its oysters, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for the wealthy, the poor, and tourists alike, and the primary natural defense against pollution for the city’s congested waterways.

Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos–this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the island hunting ground of the Lenape Indians to the death of the oyster beds and the rise of America’s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining chambers.

Kurlansky brings characters vividly to life while recounting dramatic incidents that changed the course of New York history. Here are the stories behind Peter Stuyvesant’s peg leg and Robert Fulton’s “Folly”; the oyster merchant and pioneering African American leader Thomas Downing; the birth of the business lunch at Delmonico’s; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of the highest-paid newspaper writers in the city; even “Diamond” Jim Brady, who we discover was not the gourmand of popular legend.

With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.

The Big Oyster - Mark Kurlansky

By Mark Kurlansky

Release Date: 2006-02-28

Genre: U.S. History

4 (43 ratings)
Read Download
Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled.

For centuries New York was famous for its oysters, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for the wealthy, the poor, and tourists alike, and the primary natural defense against pollution for the city’s congested waterways.

Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos–this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the island hunting ground of the Lenape Indians to the death of the oyster beds and the rise of America’s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining chambers.

Kurlansky brings characters vividly to life while recounting dramatic incidents that changed the course of New York history. Here are the stories behind Peter Stuyvesant’s peg leg and Robert Fulton’s “Folly”; the oyster merchant and pioneering African American leader Thomas Downing; the birth of the business lunch at Delmonico’s; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of the highest-paid newspaper writers in the city; even “Diamond” Jim Brady, who we discover was not the gourmand of popular legend.

With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.

More by Mark Kurlansky

Salt

Cod

1968

The Big Oyster

Paper

Milk!

Birdseye

The Belly of Paris

The Food of a Younger Land

Nonviolence

The Eastern Stars

The Last Fish Tale

The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing

Ready For a Brand New Beat

The Basque History of the World

Choice Cuts

The Core of an Onion

World Without Fish

The Importance of Not Being Ernest

The Importance of Not Being Ernest

Cheesecake

A Chosen Few

Frozen in Time (Adapted for Young Readers)

Edible Stories

City Beasts

BIG LIES

Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue

The Food of a Younger Land

The Food of a Younger Land

Havana

The Food of a Younger Land

Hank Greenberg

The Food of a Younger Land

Bugs in Danger

Las Estrellas Orientales

The Food of a Younger Land

The Life of a Lobster

No violencia

Oesters van New York

L'Avana

International Night

L'irragionevole virtĂš della pesca a mosca

Zout

Cheesecake

Hawana

To Catch a Fish

Sale

Merluzzo

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