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.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important and dramatic chapter in the American story—the settling of the Northwest Territory by dauntless pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on...
Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd Published: 05/07/2019
From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, these are stories of people of great vision and daring whose achievements continue to inspire us today, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough, who narrates his beloved classi...
Another history pageturner from the authors of the #1 bestsellers George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates.The War of 1812 saw America threatened on every side. Encouraged by the British, Indian trib...
“Another blockbuster! Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates reads like an edge-of-your-seat, page-turning thriller. You will love this book and also wonder why so few people know this story. No one captures the danger, intrigue, and drama o...
Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough—the inspiring, enthralling story of the American painters, writers, sculptors, and doctors who journeyed to Paris between 1830 ...
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JOHN ADAMS At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prospe...
In The Devil in the White City, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America&rs...
Narrator: Scott Brick,Tony Goldwyn Published: 10/17/2002
Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough—the inspiring, enthralling story of the American painters, writers, sculptors, and doctors who journeyed to Paris between 1830 ...
In The Devil in the White City, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America&rs...
Narrator: Scott Brick,Tony Goldwyn Published: 02/11/2003
{"id":"628784","ean":"9781415931943","abr":"Unabridged","title":"The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell","subtitle":"History on the Half Shell","author":"Mark Kurlansky","rating_average":"3","narrator":"John H. Mayer","ubr_id":"628784","abr_id":"320408","ubr_price":"17.82","abr_price":"13.98","ubr_memprice":"11.58","abr_memprice":"9.09","ubr_narrator":"John H. Mayer","abr_narrator":"Tom Stechschulte","ubr_length":"Unabridged: 9 hr 50 min","abr_length":"Abridged: 4 hr 40 min"}
