Virtual Mall in association with Amazon.com.
Following Information were retrieved from Amazon Web Services at Fri Jan 9 23:28:45 2009 GMT.
Please be aware that the Information may be updated at the Amazon Home Page and vary from this one.

The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell

Amazon ASIN: 0345476387 LowestNewPrice CurrencyCode USD LowestNewPrice FormattedPrice $16.56 LowestUsedPrice CurrencyCode USD LowestUsedPrice FormattedPrice $2.50 TotalNew 3 TotalUsed 28 TotalCollectible 0 TotalRefurbished 0

Product Details

Author Mark Kurlansky Binding Hardcover DeweyDecimalNumber 641.694 EAN 9780345476388 ISBN 0345476387 Label Ballantine Books Type Original Language Type Unknown Type Published CurrencyCode USD FormattedPrice $23.95 Manufacturer Ballantine Books NumberOfItems 1 NumberOfPages 320 ProductGroup Book PublicationDate 2006-02-28 Publisher Ballantine Books ReleaseDate 2006-02-28 Studio Ballantine Books Title The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.

Additional Items