has a keen eye for odd facts and natural detail.' Los Angeles Times Book Review 'Fascinating stuff. 'Suffused with pleasure in exploring the city across ground that hasn't already been covered with other writers' footprints.' With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious. Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight-along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos-this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the seventeenth-century founding of New York to the death of its 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. Rocky Mountain News 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.įor centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city's life that the abundant bivalves were Gotham's most celebrated export, a staple food for all classes, and a natural filtration system for the city's congested waterways. a great tale of the growth of a modern city as seen through the rise and fall of the lowly oyster.' The New York Times 'A small pearl of a book.

Book Synopsis 'Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining.'

The big oyster by mark kurlansky