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History on the Half Shell
Ballantine
March 2006
320 pages
ISBN: 0345476387
Hardcover
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Historical
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.
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