The Big Oyster

When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626 he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, nearby Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in New York, he could not conceal his eagerness to find and experience the fabled oyster cellars of New York City's slums.

Mark Kurlansky is the author of Cod: a Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (winner of the Glenfiddich Award for the Best Food Book in 1997), The Basque History of the World, Salt: A World History and Choice Cuts: A Miscellany of Food Writing. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

Advance praise for The Big Oyster
" 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."
- Alice Waters
" 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."
- Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award-- winning author of In the Heart of the Sea
Praise for Mark Kurlansky
1968: The Year That Rocked the World
" Memorable, essential, and in its own way wondrous."
- The Boston Globe
Salt: A World History
" Bright writing and, most gratifyingly, an enveloping narrative."
- San Francisco Chronicle
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
" This eminently readable book is a new tool for scanning world history."
- The New York Times Book Review
"From the Hardcover edition."