{"product_id":"the-big-oyster-isbn-9780345476395","title":"The Big Oyster","description":"“Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e–The New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A small pearl of a book . . . a great tale of the growth of a modern city as seen through the rise and fall of the lowly oyster.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e–Rocky Mountain News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAward-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster.\u003cbr\u003eFor centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s life that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for all classes, and a natural filtration system for the city’s congested waterways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFilled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos–this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the seventeenth-century founding of New York to the death of its 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. With \u003ci\u003eThe Big Oyster\u003c\/i\u003e, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Suffused with [Kurlansky’s] pleasure in exploring the city across ground that hasn’t already been covered with other writers’ footprints.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fascinating stuff . . . [Kurlansky] has a keen eye for odd facts and natural detail.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Kurlansky packs his breezy book with terrific anecdotes.” \u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Magnificent . . . a towering accomplishment.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eAssociated Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eAdvance praise for The Big Oyster\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.”\u003cbr\u003e–Alice Waters\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.”\u003cbr\u003e–Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award—winning author of In the Heart of the Sea\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePraise for Mark Kurlansky\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1968: The Year That Rocked the World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Memorable, essential, and in its own way wondrous.”\u003cbr\u003e–The Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSalt: A World History\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bright writing and, most gratifyingly, an enveloping narrative.”\u003cbr\u003e–San Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This eminently readable book is a new tool for scanning world history.”\u003cbr\u003e–The New York Times Book ReviewMark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award—winning author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, Salt: A World History, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, and The Basque History of the World, as well as Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue (his debut novel), and several other books. He lives in New York City.A Molluscular Life\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eObviously, if you don’t love life, you can’t enjoy an oyster.    \u003cbr\u003e—Eleanor Clark,  The Oysters of Locmariaquer, 1959\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In 1609, when Henry Hudson, a British explorer employed by the Dutch,   sailed into New York Harbor on his eighty-five-foot ship, Halve Maen,   with a half-British, half-Dutch crew of sixteen, he found the same   thing Mackay would two and a half centuries later—a local population   with the habit of feasting on excellent New York Harbor oysters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hudson was a seventeenth-century man in search of a fifteenth-century   dream. His employer, Holland, would soon be in its golden age, offering   the world Rembrandt, the microscope, and the stock exchange, but not,   as Hudson and his sponsors had hoped, a river through North America   leading to China.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A water route to Chinese trade replacing the long, arduous Silk Road   was a great dream of the Renaissance. The only alternative ever found   was in 1499 when Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal and went around   Africa to the Indian Ocean. All of the westward voyages of exploration   had ended in failure, with endless landmasses standing in the way   between Europe and China. Cabot was stopped by Canada in the north,   Verrazano was stopped by the United States farther south, Columbus by   Central America in the middle, and Magellan showed that it was a   hopelessly long way around South America to the south. Only one idea   still held any possibility and that was a passage through arctic   waters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And so Hudson was essentially an arctic explorer. In fact, he was a   failed arctic explorer. On his first voyage for the British he sailed   straight north, attempting to travel beyond the ice and down the other   side of the globe. The plan was geographically astute but   meteorologically absurd and he was stopped by ice. At the point he   could go no farther, his seventy-foot wooden vessel was only six   hundred miles short of Robert E. Peary’s 1909 achievement, reaching the   North Pole. His second voyage, heading northeast over Russia, was also   stopped by ice. At this point his British sponsor, the Muscovy Company,   dropped him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A new idea came along. In the early seventeenth century, Captain John   Smith, the ruggedly handsome legendary adventurer famous for his   conquests both military and sexual, was the great promoter of European   settlement in North America. He charted the coastline, reported on his   findings, and pitched North America to any Englishman who would listen.   He was to play a role in the promoting of Britain’s two leading North   American colonies, Virginia and Massachusetts. Hudson knew Smith and   they corresponded in 1608, by which time four-fifths of Smith’s 1607   Virginia settlers had already died. There was a growing belief that   North America was uninhabitable in the winter. But Smith’s contagious   enthusiasm never faltered. Not only did he believe in North American   settlement—this entire debate taking place as if no one was already   living there—but his maps and letters to Hudson promoted an alternative   to the theory that a water route to China could be found north of   Canada—the so-called Northwest Passage. Smith’s theory was that   somewhere north of Virginia a major river connected the Atlantic to the   Sea of Cathay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This is a case of people hearing only what they want to hear. Smith’s   Chinese sea was presumably the Pacific Ocean, but rivers are not known   to flow from one sea to another. Smith’s theory was based on statements   from northern tribes who trapped for fur. They talked of an ocean that   could be reached from a river. They probably said nothing about Cathay,   China, which was an obsession of Europeans, not North Americans. It   seems likely that the North Americans were talking about how they could   travel up the Hudson and follow the Mohawk tributary and with a short   land portage—for a canoe—arrive at the Great Lakes. Standing on the   shore of Lake Erie, one can have the impression of being on the coast   of a vast sea. Furthermore, the currents of the Hudson are so   multidirectional, the salty ocean water travels so far inland, that   according to Indian legend, the first inhabitants came to the Hudson in   search of a river that ran two ways, as though it flowed into seas at   both ends. Whether such early Indian explorers existed, the Europeans   came looking for exactly that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hudson, the out-of-work explorer, had something to sell: a possible new   passage to China. The Muscovy Company had listened and voted against   the project. But Britain’s new and fast-growing competitor, Holland,   was interested. The Vernenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC, known in   English as the Dutch East India Company, hired him. The Dutch were not   interested in new theories from John Smith or Henry Hudson. They hired   Hudson to search for the northeastern passage, a route through the ice   floes north of Russia. Hudson had no faith in this northeastern theory,   but the VOC gave him a commission with a new ship, and so he took it   and sailed north until well out of the view of Dutchmen. Then he picked   up a westerly gale and crossed the Atlantic, thousands of miles in the   opposite direction of his orders, and reached the North American coast   off Newfoundland.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    More than a century after John Cabot’s voyage, this was a well-known   route. Hudson then followed the coastline south to Cape Hatteras and   the mouth of the Chesapeake within miles of his friend Smith at   Jamestown but, sailing in a Dutch vessel, did not visit the British   settlement. Perhaps he needed to locate Smith’s Jamestown to find his   bearing on Smith’s maps. Then he began exploring the coastline for a   river to China.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In this search he became the first European to enter Delaware Bay. But   seeing the shallow waters, shoals, and bars at the mouth of the   Delaware, Hudson felt certain that this was not a river great enough to   cut through North America to China. He continued on, viewing the forest   lands of an unknown continent off the port side, seemingly uninhabited,   with only an occasional bird chirp for counterpoint to the rolling surf   on sandy beaches and the creaks in the Half Moon’s rigging.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then, rounding a flat, sandy, narrow peninsula, today accurately   labeled Sandy Hook, Hudson and his men, almost as if falling through a   keyhole, found themselves in another world. The wide expanse of water,   one hundred square miles, lay flat, sheltered by the bluffs of Staten   Island and the rolling hills of Brooklyn. Sandy Hook on the port and   the shoals of Rockaway Peninsula on the starboard, an ideal barrier   furnished with several channels, protected the opening. When they   looked into the water, they could see large fish following them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This was the place. From all directions they saw rivers pouring into   the bay. If there were a chasm in the heart of North America opening up   a waterway all the way to China, this is what it would look like.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hudson identified three “great rivers.” They were probably Raritan Bay,   which separates New Jersey and Staten Island, the opening to the Upper   Harbor, and the Rockaway Inlet on the Brooklyn–Queens shore of Long   Island. He had not yet sailed through the narrow opening between Staten   Island and Brooklyn—not yet seen the Upper Bay, the Hudson River, the   Harlem River, and the East River that connects with Long Island Sound.   He had not yet seen the lush, green, rocky island of ponds and streams   in the middle of the estuary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hudson sent a landing party ashore on Staten Island. It was late summer   and the plum trees and grapevines were bearing fruit. Immediately upon   landing, as though Hudson’s crew had been expected, as though invited,   people dressed in animal skins appeared to welcome them. These people   in animal skins saw that the leader of the people who arrived in the   floating house wore a red coat that sparkled with gold lace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In what would become a New York tradition, commerce instantly began.   The Europeans in red had tools, while the skin-clad Americans offered   hemp, beans, and a local delicacy—oysters. The Europeans thought they   were getting much better value than they were giving, but the Americans   may have thought the same thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hudson and his men had no idea with whom they were trading. They   reported that the people in skins were friendly and polite but not to   be trusted. These people the Europeans distrusted called their land   Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenape. The Lenape thought they knew   their visitors. They were a people they called in their language   shouwunnock, which meant “Salty People.” The grandparents of the Lenape   who saw Hudson may have seen an earlier Salty Person, the Italian,   Giovanni da Verrazano, sailing the coast with his crew for Francis I,   king of France, in 1524. Verrazano had chosen to moor his ship off   Staten Island, farther up than Hudson, in the narrow opening that bears   his name and where Staten Island is now connected to Brooklyn by a   bridge. Verrazano could see the second interior bay with its wide   rivers and well-placed island and described the bay as “a pleasant   lake.” He named it Santa Margarita after the sister of his patron,   Francis. “We passed up with our boat only into the said river, and saw   the country very well peopled. The people are almost like unto the   others, and clad with feathers of fowls of divers colors. They came   toward us very cheerfully, making great shouts of admiration, showing   us where we might come to land most safely with our boat.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But soon shifting winds forced the Europeans, with great reluctance, to   return to their ship and sail on. This was probably the first sighting   of Salty People by the inhabitants of the harbor, although their   grandparents may also have seen Ésteban Gomez, a Portuguese explorer   who passed this way. An early Portuguese map suggests that Europeans,   probably either Portuguese or Basque fishermen, may have sailed to this   place at the time of Columbus. Some of those who now met Hudson and his   crew may have heard of or even had contact with the Frenchman Samuel de   Champlain, who only a few months earlier had traveled south from what   is now Canada to the lake that is named after him. Jamestown, near the   mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, was just south of the Lenapes’ Delaware   Bay and was already two years old when Hudson arrived in New York. By   the time Hudson arrived, the Lenapes knew Salty People when they saw   them. They had been coming for a long time with very little   consequence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This group stayed longer than the others. They explored the upper   harbor, then chose the river west of the island and sailed up what is   now called the Hudson as far as what is now Albany. From there, it must   have been clear that this narrowing river was not leading to China and   they left.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In the Lenape language, lenape translates as “the common man.”   Sometimes they called themselves Lenni Lenape, which means “we, the   people.” Europeans have labeled the language and the people Delaware.   They were a loose confederation of populations living between the South   River, the Delaware, and the North River, the Hudson. Until the   twentieth century, it was believed that between eight and twelve   thousand such people lived in what is today Delaware, Pennsylvania, New   Jersey, New York, and Connecticut when Hudson arrived. But these low   estimates were based on the count in the year 1700, which was three   thousand. Starting in 1633, the Lenape had already been through at   least fourteen epidemics of such European diseases as smallpox,   malaria, and measles. More recently, archaeologists have concluded that   as many as fifteen thousand lived in what is today New York City and   possibly as many as fifty thousand others lived in the Lenape region.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lenape villages were busy little clusters of longhouses made of bark   and grass. They lived on fishing and hunting, and gathering nuts,   fruit, and shellfish. They made clothes of cured deer and elk skins. In   spring, coastal Lenapes set up large fishing camps. They trapped,   netted, and speared shad and other river fish. They had monogamous   marriages, but sexual relations between the unmarried were acceptable   until Europeans introduced venereal diseases. The dead were greatly   mourned. Sometimes mourners would blacken their faces for an entire   year. The dead, it was believed, traveled along a star path. Each star   in the Milky Way was believed to be a footprint.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Lenape believed that their history began when Kishelemukong, the   creator, brought a giant turtle up from the deep ocean. The back of the   turtle grew into a vast island, North America. They believed they had   come to the mid-Atlantic from farther west and archaeologists agree,   saying they arrived at the Atlantic three thousand years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There were three major groups of Lenape and numerous subdivisions   within those. They had few unifying institutions except language, and   even that broke down into dialects. One of the groups, the Munsey,   which means “mountaineers,” controlled the mountains near the   headwaters of the Delaware. They also maintained hunting grounds in   what is now the New York City area. It is the Munsey language that gave   Manhattan and many other New York places their names. It is uncertain   from which Munsey word the name Manhattan is derived. One theory is   that it comes from the word manahactanienk, which means “place of   inebriation,” but another is that it comes from manahatouh, meaning “a   place where wood is available for making bows and arrows.” The even   more prosaic possibility that is most often cited is that it comes from   menatay, which simply means “island.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lenape and Lenni Lenape are Munsey words. Many of the subgroups have   become place names. On Long Island, the Canarsee, the Rockaways, and   the Massapequas all spoke Munsey. The Raritans, Tappans, and   Hackensacks, all of whom spoke Unami, a different language in the same   family as Munsey, controlled different parts of Staten Island, northern   Manhattan, the Bronx, and parts of New Jersey. All of these people and   other locals such as the Wieckquaesgecks of Westchester, ate oysters,   and some may have traveled some distance for them. The Lenape who gave   Hudson his first taste of New York oysters were from what is now   Yonkers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We know that the Lenape ate copious quantities of oysters because   oyster shells last a very long time and they left behind tremendous   piles of them. These piles, containing thousands of shells, have been   found throughout the New York City area. Archaeologists call them shell   middens. The most common marker of a pre-European settlement anywhere   in the area of the mouth of the Hudson are these piles of oyster   shells, sometimes as much as four feet deep, sometimes buried in the   ground, sometimes piled high. The early-seventeenth-century Dutch were   the first to note the shell middens. One such mountain of oyster shells   gave Pearl Street, originally on the waterfront in lower Manhattan, its   name. Contrary to popular belief, the street was not actually paved   with oyster shells until many years after it was named for a midden.   The Dutch found another midden at what is now the intersection of Canal   Street and the Bowery and called it Kalch-Hook, Shell-Point.National bestseller; Author of Cod and Salt [quote]--The New York Times","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300749529317,"sku":"NP9780345476395","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345476395.jpg?v=1767738374","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-big-oyster-isbn-9780345476395","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}