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Late Feb, 2007. A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.
Well, this book is a history of salt. Of politics, sciences, wars, and businesses which were all about salt. It has large focuses on the salt of China, USA, England, and Western Europe (France, Germany, and Italy.) Oh, and a fair amount of information about the Dead Sea. I felt that the section dealing with Salt in American History was a bit too long, but I guess that's where the author had the most information, so it might be forgivable.
It's nice that he didn't just sit in his office and go to the library in New York though; He went around the world, visiting the Dead Sea, and England, and parts of China, and India. This was noticeable in how he wrote about the places. (Though I would guess that he hadn't been to Lüneburg: He mistakenly says that "an ancient ham, supposedly made from [the 1000 year old boar which led hunters to the Lüneburg salt,] is on display in the Lüneburg town hall." -But in reality, it's only a thigh bone from the boar in the town hall here.)
It was interesting to hear about all the different ways that salt has been made, and much more interesting was the huge role that it played in civilisations. For example, it wasn't the main reason that India wanted it's independence from England, but it became a symbol for that. It wasn't the reason that the Southern states lost the American civil war, but it was one of the contributing factors. There were really quite a lot of interesting little bits of history in the book.
It was a well written book, and now I would really like to go to see the Lüneburg Salt Museum one of these days.