A History of Big Lies:  From Socrates to Social Media
Tilbury House, September 27, 2022

For ages 12 and up.  We seem to be living in an age of lying but it was not invented by social media. Lies have always been around and many of the lies on social media to day have been around for centuries. Why are there lies? How are they detected? What is their impact? and what to do about it in this age of social media.

In his new book for young readers Mark Kurlansky’s lens is the art of the “big lie,” a term coined by Adolf Hitler. Kurlansky has written Big Lies: From Socrates to Social Media for the next stewards of our world. It is not only a history but a how-to manual for seeing through big l... Read More >>

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The Importance of Not Being Ernest:  My life with the uninvited Hemingway
Books and Books Press, May 31, 2022

Ernest Hemingway Biography Like No Other

“For all that’s already been written about Hemingway,The Importance of Not Being Ernest illuminates his life and works in ways not seen before.”  — Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award winner and author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through

“The ghost of Hemingway has haunted and inspired at least three generations of  writers. Mark Kurlansky is no exception, and his detailed, self-deprecating account of the presence of that ghost is as brilliantly revealing of Hemingway as it is of Kurlansky himself. He knows his Hemingwa... Read More >>

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The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing
Bloomsbury

Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish--and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets--salmon, trout, and char; and for some, bass, tarpon, tuna, bonefish, and even marlin--are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky learns, is that fly fishing makes catching a fish as difficult as possible. There is an art, too, in the crafting of flies. Beautiful and intricate, some are made with more than two dozen pieces of feather and fur from a wide range of animals. The cast as well is a matter of grace and rhythm, wit... Read More >>

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Salmon:  A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate
Patagonia, March 3rd 2020

One of nature's most remarkable and inspiring animals with a long history of both commercial and sports fishing all over the Northern Atlantic and Pacific, Threatened by everything from deforestation, to climate change, to dams  if the salmon can survive than there is hope for the planet.

"Henry David Thoreau wrote, 'Who hears the fishes when they cry?' Maybe we need to go down to the river bank and try to listen."In what he says is the most important piece of environmental writing in his long and award-winning career, Mark Kurlansky, best-selling author of Salt and Cod, The Big Oyster, 1968, and Milk, among m... Read More >>

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Bugs In Danger:  Our Vanishing Bees, Butterflies, and Beetles
Bloomsbury Children's Books

By now you've probably heard that bees are disappearing--but they aren't the only species at risk. Populations of fireflies, butterflies, and ladybugs have all been declining in recent years, too. This middle grade nonfiction explains the growth, spread, and recent declines of each of these four types of insects. Exploring human causes, like the Baltimore electric company that collected fireflies to attempt to harness their phosphorescent lighting source, to natural occurrences, like the mysterious colony collapse disorder that plagues bee populations, master nonfiction storyteller Mark Kurlansky shows just how much bugs matter to our world. Read More >>

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Hardback, Bloomsbury USA, May 8th 2018 		MILK!:  A Ten Thousand Year Food Fracus
Hardback, Bloomsbury USA, May 8th 2018
Kindle Version, May 8th 2018

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic, and culinary story of milk and all things dairy--with recipes throughout.

According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago, originally as a source of cheese, yogurt, kefir, and all manner of edible innovations that... Read More >>

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Havana:  A subtropical delirum
Hardback, Bloomsbury USA, March 7th 2017
Kindle Version, March 7th 2017

This is my thirtieth book . Om a starred review Booklist called it a “ little gem of a book." I have been regularly visiting this 500 year-old city for the fast thirty years off constant shifts and dramatic changes.  This book looks at the history of this city, its literature, music, sense of humor, food and personality..An homage to a great and tattered city.

A city of tropical heat, sweat, ramshackle beauty, and its very own cadence--a city that always surprises--Havana is brought to pulsing life by New York Times bestselling author Mark Kurlansky.

Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky present... Read More >>

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Paper:  Paging Through History
Hardback, W. W. Norton & Company, May 17th 2016
Kindle Version, May 16th 2016

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.

Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. One has only to look at history’s greatest press run, which produced 6.5 billion copies of Máo zhuxí yulu, Quotations from Chair... Read More >>

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Frozen in Time:  Clarence Birdseye's Outrageous Idea About Frozen Food
Delacorte Books for Young Readers; Simultaneously available in a hardcover and trade paperback edition. Each edition includes an 8-page black-and-white photo insert.

The story of an odd man of imagination who  changed the world of food. Today Clarence Birdseye seems on the one hand very old fashioned but on the other curiously modern.

This biography—perfect for middle-grade readers—tells the life story of Clarence Birdseye, the man who revolutionized the frozen food industry, and is adapted from Mark Kurlansky’s adult work Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man.

Adventurer and inventor Clarence Birdseye had a fascination with food preservation that led him to develop and patent the Birdseye freezing process and start the company that still bears his name today. Hi... Read More >>

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International Night:  A Father and Daughter cook their way around the world.  Including more than 250 recipes.

Once a week in the Kurlansky home, Mark spins a globe and wherever his daughter's finger lands becomes the theme of that Friday night's dinner. Their tradition of International Night has afforded Mark an opportunity to share with his daughter, Talia--and now the readers of International Night--the recipes, stories, and insights he's collected over more than thirty years of traveling the world writing about food, culture, and history, and his charming pen-and-ink drawings, which appear throughout the book.

International Night is brimming with recipes for fifty-two special meals--appetizers, a main course, side ... Read More >>

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Ready for a Brand New Beat:  How "Dancing in the Street" became an anthem for a changing America.
Hardback, Riverhead Books, 2013

In 1964, Marving Gaye, record producer Wiliam "Mickey" Stevenson, and Motown song writer Ivy Jo Hunter wrote "Dancing In The Street."  Recorded at Hitsville U.S.A. Studio by Martha and the Vandellas, the song was supposed to be upbeat party music.  But in a volatile summer the words could mean many things. The summer of 1964 was the in edition to the summer the Beatles came, the zenith of the Civil Rights movement with the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the summer of Black Power, the summer the Vietnam War began, the summer that a presidential election permanently reconfigured American politics, and the first Black ... Read More >>

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Birdseye:  The Adventures of a Curious Man
Doubleday, May 2012

A biography of Clarence Birdseye, the inventor of frozen food and one of the last of the eccentric inventors who solved problems with odd scraps in his basement.

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What?:  Are these the 20 most important questions in human history—or is this a game of 20 questions?
Bloomsbury, May 2011

A small book about questioning that asks why we make so many statements but ask so few questions. The book is written entirely in the interrogative and is statement-free, with 22 linocut illustrations of questions. It questions the questioning of Jane Austin, T.S. Elliot, The Gospels, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Descartes, Freud, Langston Hughes, Keats, Neitzche, Plato, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, The Talmud and many others.

What is What? Could it be that noted author Mark Kurlansky has written a very short, terrifically witty, deeply thought-provoking book entirely in the form of questions? ... Read More >>

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The Eastern Stars:  How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macorís.
Riverhead Books 2010

A portrait of the town of San Pedro de Macorís, a small impoverished community in the sugar growing region of the Dominican Republic that has so far produced 79 Major League baseball players with many minor leaguers waiting in the wings. It is a baseball story but also reveals the unusual history and rich culture of the Dominican Republic and the impact of baseball, which produces millionaires and can change the life of an entire family, on this struggling Caribbean town.
In a starred review Publishers Weekly wrote: "As he has done so masterfully in his earlier bestselling books on cod, salt, and oysters, Kurlan... Read More >>

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The Food of A Younger Land:  A portrait of American food–before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional–from the lost WPA files.
Riverhead Books
Hardback, 2009
Paperback, 2010

An anthology with introduction and annotations of the unpublished manuscripts from the last WPA writers project, an exploration of food and eating in America in 1940. This broad assortment of raw, unpublished, 1940 manuscripts, including works by Nelson Algren, Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston reveal a very different America with a different cuisine and a different society. Illustrated with linocuts by the author.

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Hardcover, US
 		The Last Fish Tale:  The Fate of the Atlantic and survival in Gloucester, America’s Oldest Port and Most Original Town.
Paperback, Riverhead Books 2009.

A portrait of Gloucester Massachusetts a rare surviving fishing port among coastal towns increasingly turning to tourism, this is an exploration of the rich culture of commercial fishing, the rare society it builds, and the struggle to continue in the 21st century.  A Boston Globe Best seller, the Globe wrote, In The Last Fish Tale Mark Kurlansky strikes a poignant chord.  Beautifully written.”  The Financial Times wrote “An engrossing multilayered portrait of a fishing community that can be read for pure pleasure as well as being a campaigning plea for the environment.” Illustrated with pen and ink line drawings by the author. Read More >>

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Non-Violence:  Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea.
Forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Hardback, Modern Library, 2006.

Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea.
Forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Paperback, Modern Library, 2008.

Winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Economist called it “an erudite and eloquent book.” In this timely, original and controversial narrative, nonviolence is discussed, not as a mere state of mind but as a distinct technique for overcoming social injustice and ending wars. This sweeping but conci... Read More >>

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The Big Oyster:  History on the Half Shell.
Ballantine 2006.

It is almost forgotten that for all of its history New York was famous for its urban oyster beds until they were destroyed by pollution in the early twentieth century. This is the history of the city told through its most famous natural resource. The New York Times wrote “Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining.” The Los Angles Times wrote, “Suffused with [Kurlansky’s] pleasure in exploring the city across ground that hasn’t already been covered with other writers’ footprints.” A national bestseller, the Associated Press called it “a towering accomplishment.”

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1968:  The Year That Rocked the World.
Ballantine 2004.

The famous year looked at from a global perspective. Why did so many diverse societies from the U.S. to Mexico, to Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Japan have such similar movements rising up spontaneously and doing the same thing at the exact same time. A New York Times and national Best seller translated into twenty-five languages. It won the American Library Association Notable Book of the Year Award. The Chicago Tribune wrote "Splendid... evocative... No one before Kurlansky has managed to evoke so rich a set of experiences in so many different places–and to keep the story humming.”

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Choice Cuts:  A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History.
Hardback, Ballantine, 2002.
Paperback, Penguin Books, 2004.

Just as the subtitle says a collection of food writing that includes work by Brillat-Savarin, Escoffier, Ludwig Bemelmans, A. J. Liebling, Herodotus, Plutarch, W. H. Auden, Charles Dickens, Irving Berlin, James Beard, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Edna Ferber, Emile Zola, Wole Soyinka, Shalom Aleichem, Cato, the Talmud, Margaret Mead, and many others. Saveur Magazine wrote “The most outrageously broad, gregarious food-writing anthology.” Illustrated by the author with pen and brush drawings.

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Paperback, US
 		Salt:  A World History.
Hardback, Walker, 2002.
Paperback 2003.

Until about 100 years ago, salt, the only rock we eat, was one of the world’s most sought after commodities. Wars were fought over it, other wars were financed with it, colonies were settled to get it. It secured empires and spurred revolutions. Then, fairly suddenly, it lost its value. A cautionary tale of world history. Anthony Bourdain called it “a must have for any serious cook or foodie.” The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Kurlansky continues to prove himself remarkably adept at taking a most unlikely candidate and telling its tale with epic grandeur.” A New York Times and international best seller, Salt has been... Read More >>

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The Basque History of the World
Hardback, Walker, 1999.
Paperback, Penguin, 2001.

A history of the oldest and least understood European culture, their history, food, culture, and their ancient language that is not related to any other known language. The New York Times called it “an unorthodox approach, mixing history with anecdotes, poems and recipes.” an international best seller, translated into numerous languages. Illustrated by the author.

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Cod:  A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.
Hardback, Walker, 1997.
Paperback, Penguin, 1998.

A history of the 1000 years in which cod was the most important catch in the Atlantic, how wars were fought over it, how it spurred revolutions, the important role it played in American, Caribbean, African, and European history.  Winner of the James Beard Award, the Glenfiddich food writing award, the New York Public Library Best Books of the Year award.  A New York Times and International best seller, translated into more than twenty languages. Historian David McCullough wrote, “Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes afresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish.” Read More >>

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Paperback, US 		A Chosen Few:  The Resurrection of European Jewry
Hardback, Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Reissued in Paperback, with a new introduction and, discussion between the author and Philip Gourevitch, Ballantine, 2002.

What was it like to return home with most everyone you cared about murder and rebuild a life among the people who either cooperated with the killers or did nothing to stop them?  Why did these Jews go back and how did they rebuild Jewish life.  Starting at the close of World War II and continuing through the fall of the Soviet Union this is the story of families and communities in Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, East and West Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague.  The Washington Post wrote “In this valuable book, Kurlansky brings alive the missing years of European Jewry.”

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A Continent of Islands:  Searching for the Caribbean Destiny.
Hardback, Addison-Wesley. 1992.
Paperback available from Perseus.

After seven years covering the Caribbean for the Chicago Tribune, this is a study of the Caribbean, its history, culture, and society. It explores everything from pollution , to the politic of hurricanes, to religion, to race relations, to music. From Cuba to Trinidad. After almost two decades it remains the necessary book for journalists, tourists, anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the region. About this title Washington Post Book World wrote: "An engaging book by an excellent journalist. Kirkus Review wrote, "A penetrating analysis of the social, political, sexual, and cultural worlds that exist behind the four-color Caribbean travel posters." Read More >>

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