When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626, he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, nearby Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770. From the Minuit purchase until pollution finally destroyed the beds in the 1920s, New York was a city known for its oysters, especially in the late 1800s, when Europe and America enjoyed a decades-long oyster craze. In a dubious endorsement, William Makepeace Thackeray said that eating a New York oyster was like eating a baby. Travellers to New York were also keen to experience the famous New York oyster houses. While some were known for their elegance, due to a longstanding belief in the aphrodisiac quality of oysters, they were often associated with prostitution. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in New York, he could not conceal his eagerness to find and experience the fabled oyster cellars of New York City's slums. "The Big Oyster" is the story of a city and of an international trade. Filled with cultural, social and culinary insight - as well as recipes, maps, drawings and photographs - this is history at its most engrossing, entertaining and delicious.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Advance praise for The Big Oyster
" In his portrait of the once-famous oyster beds of New York Harbor, Kurlansky beautifully illustrates food's ability to connect us deeply to our particular place in the world, and shows how our nourishment is so vitally tied to the health of the natural world."
- Alice Waters
" Mark Kurlansky has done it again. The Big Oyster is a zesty love song to a bivalve and a city- intelligent, informative, and impossible to put down."
- Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award-- winning author of In the Heart of the Sea
" In his portrait of the once-famous oyster beds of New York Harbor, Kurlansky beautifully illustrates food's ability to connect us deeply to our particular place in the world, and shows how our nourishment is so vitally tied to the health of the natural world."
- Alice Waters
" Mark Kurlansky has done it again. The Big Oyster is a zesty love song to a bivalve and a city- intelligent, informative, and impossible to put down."
- Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award-- winning author of In the Heart of the Sea
Praise for Mark Kurlansky
1968: The Year That Rocked the World
" Memorable, essential, and in its own way wondrous."
- The Boston Globe
Salt: A World History
" Bright writing and, most gratifyingly, an enveloping narrative."
- San Francisco Chronicle
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
" This eminently readable book is a new tool for scanning world history."
- The New York Times Book Review
"From the Hardcover edition."
About the Author
Mark Kurlansky is the author of Cod: a Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (winner of the Glenfiddich Award for the Best Food Book in 1997), The Basque History of the World, Salt: A World History and Choice Cuts: A Miscellany of Food Writing. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.
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More About the Author
Mark Kurlansky is a New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award-winning author. He is the recipient of a Bon Appétit American Food and Entertaining Award for Food Writer of the Year, and the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award for Food Book of the year.
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