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 inhabitantsΓ―ΒΏΒ½the 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 cityΓ―ΒΏΒ½s economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalves were GothamΓ―ΒΏΒ½s most celebrated export, a staple food for the wealthy, the poor, and tourists alike, and the primary natural defense against pollution for the cityΓ―ΒΏΒ½s congested waterways.
Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insightΓ―ΒΏΒ½along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photosΓ―ΒΏΒ½this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the island hunting ground of the Lenape Indians to the death of the oyster beds and the rise of AmericaΓ―ΒΏΒ½s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to ManhattanΓ―ΒΏΒ½s 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 StuyvesantΓ―ΒΏΒ½s peg leg and Robert FultonΓ―ΒΏΒ½s Γ―ΒΏΒ½FollyΓ―ΒΏΒ½; the oyster merchant and pioneering African American leader Thomas Downing; the birth of the business lunch at DelmonicoΓ―ΒΏΒ½s; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of the highest-paid newspaper writers in the city; even Γ―ΒΏΒ½DiamondΓ―ΒΏΒ½ 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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