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The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
Buy New: $62.35
New (1) Used (7) from $7.35
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 1313350
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0739325981
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.694
EAN: 9780739325988
ASIN: 0739325981
Publication Date: February 28, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Book is brand new, and has never been opened. Thousands of satisfied customers!
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Product Description
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.
From the Compact Disc edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
The Natural Wonder of NYC October 28, 2008
This is an eye-opening book about the bounty that surrounded New York in the early years of the city, amazing for those of us who grew up locally in the pollution and grime of the late 20th century. For oyster lovers, the story is even more heartbreaking, as oysters used to be available for 10 cents each as opposed to being flown in from far-off lands for many times that. But, it is fun to consider all those oysters and the recipes contained in the book. I think I'll stop by the Oyster Bar the next time I'm in town!
 Do I have to write a book report? May 28, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'll grant that Mark Kurlansky did his homework.He provides an extensive Bibliography and the narrative is filled with many, many, many facts. That's exactly the problem. The book is overflowing with details. For the first time in many years I felt I was reading a history assignment - hence the title of this Review.
I did glean many interesting facts, both big and small. Trouble is, the facts just keep coming. As other reviewers have indicated there are numerous recipes in the book but I would venture to say that most of them are for food historians, not chefs. One brief example is the following recipe: "To Roast a Leg of Lamb with Oysters. Take a Leg about two or three Days kill'd. Stuff it all over with Oysters and roast it. Garnish it with horse-raddish." Yup! That's the whole, succinct recipe.
I'll admit that the number old prints reproduced in this book are interesting. But unless you are of the scholarly type I'd save this book for a night when you have insomnia.
 Can't beat it. April 8, 2008
History, History, History. And we continue to live it. Know our past control our future.
 Too Much for a Magazine Artice; Not Enough for a Book March 13, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
At first it seems curious that Mark Kurlansky would want to write a history of a city and its residents whom he so thoroughly dislikes. Then it becomes clear that the protagonists are the oysters, not the city or the people, and those oysters would still be doing just fine if it weren't for the depredations of civilization. Eventually you get caught up in the saga, but it's a little thin, so the author adds copious amounts of non-oyster New York City history. This part will seem somewhat duplicative of "The Island at the Center of the World," but it's almost as interesting the second time around. Then, just as you start taking him seriously as a historian, Kurlansky starts making the kind of egregious factual errors that throw his scholarship into question. On page 15, for instance he states that humans evolved 65 million years ago. Wow! The earliest hominid fossils date to about 2 million years ago. His disregard for science continues when he erroneously asserts that recapitulation is a "well established principal (sic) of evolutionary science." Actually it's a captivating, but long-debunked theory. Errors like these make us much less receptive to the hundreds of casual facts strewn throughout the book.
Here's a sincere tip for the prospective reader attracted to the book's subtitle, "History on the Half Shell." The entire story of the history of the oyster in New York City is contained in chapters 6 and 8. Of course if you want to read all about the gangs of New York, or the biography of Diamond Jim Brady, by all means, read the entire book. But the problem with reading the entire book is the turgid march of one colorless sentence after another. Any single page of Henry Thoreau contains more entertaining prose than Kurlansky's entire book.
Kurlansky repeatedly refers to New Yorkers' gluttony: "The two most common gastronomic observations made about nineteenth century New York were that the oysters were cheap and that the people ate enormous quantities not only of oysters, but of everything." That is Kurlansky's typical characterization of a New Yorker. Yet not one of the old photographs or pen and ink drawings illustrating the book depict a single obese person.
Overall, this is one of those badly written books about an interesting topic. If distilled to its essence, it might have made a good article in the Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker. It will not make you thirst for Kurlansky's other books, "Salt," and "Cod."
Too Many Mistakes To Take Seriously December 30, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I love oysters, and New York history, and was looking forward to this, but as other reviewers pointed out simply has too many mistakes to be taken seriously.
I will add to the list:
a. he claims Robert Fulton invented the submarine. False. There have been many variations of submarines hundreds of years before Fulton, and one of the first military uses was during the American revolution.
b. He claims the New York delegation didn't sign the Declaration of Independence.
That's what did me in. Anyone who let an error like that slip through shouldn't be writing history books, even about oysters. I hesitated to finish it because he lost all credibility with me and the last thing I want to do is read mis-information. I can't believe that someone published a book with so many sloppy mistakes.
..............
He also tried to impose modern new york and his cosmopolitian outlook/multiculturalism on the past, which I found inaccurate and annoying. For example he points out Stuyvesant required chapel, banned alcohol and other measures, and goes out of his way to mention that how bad it was...he skips the fact Stuyvesant was effective in turning the colony around, precisely because he took such measures.
It may offend our modern sensibilities, but reality is reality.
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