Book Review 

Title: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky 

Genre: History, Science, Food 

Rating: 3 Stars  

I picked this book up purely because I saw Kayla from BooksandLaLa reading it on her channel and much like she said in her review, it does exactly what it says on the tin, provide a world history of salt. Now, many will know that salt is essential to all life and most living creatures especially mammals cannot internally make salt so we must consume through our diet. Animals will tend to find salt licks, solid rocks of salt which they lick to gain their dietary amount of salt while us humans figured out where it came from and how to mass produce it for the modern age. However, salt has a long and often bloody history that people forget because it is so essential to life. Almost every war you can think of has used salt in some way from preserving food for long voyages and sieges to depriving the enemy of this vital substance to weaken their forces, which is exactly what happen to the South in the American Civil War.  

It was intriguing to see how every culture over human history has at some point found salt and found a way to mass produce it. From the brine pools of the American style to the solar evaporation method favored by many smaller countries and islands, to the wells favored by the Chinese for many years until technology and industry provided a faster alternative. Every single country or person that found salt through whatever method they were using seemed to understand instinctively that this was a highly prized substances that could be used in a variety of applications making it at times more expensive than precious metals. Some of the first uses for salt were in preservation going right back to the early explorers because this was one of the only methods available for making food last on long journeys. It also became one of the first food of currency as countries that didn’t have the right weather for salt production often traded in salt. Take the Nordic people for example, due to their cold and often damp climate they couldn’t reliably produce salt so they traded their abundant source of Atlantic cod for salt, this cod was then often salted and used on long ship journeys as a reliable source of nutrition for sailors at a time when little could be preserved for these long journeys.  

Salt as a currency is nothing new, much like beer and bread of all, many of earliest forms of currency had nothing in common with the modern system we use now. Even a few centuries ago when a more modern currency system was in place, many still trades goods like salt for other goods that couldn’t be produced in the receiving region even though “money” was an option. Salt as reason for war or occupation is also not a new concept because this has been happening for centuries as well. During the British occupation of India, salt was the driving force behind India’s independence. While the British held India they made fatal decisions like raising the price of salt for the locals and often banning the production and sale of salt that was seen as competition to the British Liverpool salt. This directly led to many people in India not being able to afford salt and not being able to produce it themselves despite there being a lot of it around. This was the driving force behind the march of independence and Ghandi was the first one to break to salt laws without violence. However, this moved proved to the British how their pride in their salt drove a wedge between them and one of their most vital territories at the time.  

Salt's applications are also more widely varied than many people will anticipate. The most notable application is in the production and preservation of food, but salt can also be used in the textile industry to help stiffen fabrics and set dyes. Salt can be used in the glass making to help lower the temperature of the melt as well as in in the pharmaceutical industry. This variety of applications and uses has made salt throughout history one of, if not the most asset any country can have. Overall, I found the book to be interesting and intriguing, prompting various avenues of thought on why salt is so valuable and the variety of ways it can be used but the writing was often extremely dry resulting in it taking me an extraordinary amount of time of finish the book, lowering the rating.