--- title: Mark Kurlansky on the Secret Histories of Salt, Cod and Milk description: The best-selling historian talks about his books about the influence unheralded commodities have on our daily lives canonical: https://time.com/4828085/mark-kurlansky-cod-paper-milk/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-06-22T10:28:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T16:15:56.310Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Author Mark Kurlansky on the Surprising Histories of Salt, Cod and Milk og:description: As well as oysters, paper — and the many commodities that quietly affect everyone's lives og:url: https://time.com/4828085/mark-kurlansky-cod-paper-milk/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb36764e824320f00/6988d2c322fb854f21e21aa2/mark-kurlansky.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: mark-kurlansky og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Author Mark Kurlansky on the Surprising Histories of Salt, Cod and Milk twitter:description: As well as oysters, paper — and the many commodities that quietly affect everyone's lives twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb36764e824320f00/6988d2c322fb854f21e21aa2/mark-kurlansky.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Author Mark Kurlansky on the Surprising Histories of Salt, Cod and Milk by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jun 22, 2017 10:28 AM UTC  American journalist and writer Mark Kurlansky attends a photocall at Edinburgh International Book Festival at Charlotte Square Gardens on August 17, 2016 in Edinburgh, Scotland. American journalist and writer Mark Kurlansky attends a photocall at Edinburgh International Book Festival at Charlotte Square Gardens on August 17, 2016 in Edinburgh, Scotland.Roberto Ricciuti—Getty Images by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jun 22, 2017 10:28 AM UTC _Twenty years after_ [Cod](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140275010/?tag=timecom-20)_, one year after_ [Paper](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0142001619/?tag=timecom-20) _and as he wraps up_ Spilt Milk_, the best-selling historian talks about the genre he popularized._ **So many authors have imitated the form of** **_Cod_** **. Are you flattered or annoyed?** Everyone always gets a little irritated by imitators, but mostly I’m flattered. What if you never did anything anyone wanted to copy? **Have publishers asked you to endorse your imitators?** Yeah. A few of them I thought were really good, a lot of them I thought were really boring, and if they have a cover letter bragging about how they’ve copied me, I don’t even look at it. **What have been the good ones?** I blurbed a nice book, not at all like my book [_The Big Oyster_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345476395/?tag=timecom-20), called [_The Essential Oyster_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632862565/?tag=timecom-20). I blurbed a pretty good book about meat called [_Meathooked_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465036627/?tag=timecom-20). **Have you ever received one that seemed ridiculous?** I don’t think I want to just trash these people! But I have, yes. This isn’t a real one, but an example is if you did a book on oil and said, “The Fossil Fuel That Changed the World.” I mean, no kidding. And then there are the books where they just absurdly overrate the impact. People think that I sit around thinking up commodities to write about, but actually I’ve had 30 books published, and most of them aren’t this kind of book. **You’ve done several that have taken that form:** **_Cod_** **,** **_Salt_** **,** **_Paper_** **.** I have one coming out on milk. But these all are for very different reasons. I started writing _Cod_ at a time when people were first beginning to take an interest in the problem of fisheries because the Grand Banks had closed. The thing that was fascinating about salt is that it was considered so valuable and people went to such lengths to get it, and then almost overnight everybody said, “Oh, that’s no big deal.” What is the true value of the things that we’re valuing, and will it last? George W. Bush read that book, and I’m told from White House correspondents that he used to talk about it a lot. I wondered if he was picking up on a very intended message about oil. The oyster book was about the degradation of an urban environment. Paper was an opportunity to talk about technology and society. **Do people propose commodities to you to write about?** Constantly. “Ever think of a book about lettuce?” What I used to get a lot after Salt came out was “pepper” — which shows that they’re not getting it at all. **Who is the founder of this genre?** I don’t know who the founder is, but I can tell you about a couple of people who did very nice jobs before me. Sidney Mintz wrote a book about sugar called [_Sweetness and Power_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140092331/?tag=timecom-20). Betty Fussell did a wonderful book about [corn](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0826335926/?tag=timecom-20). The inventors we remember didn’t invent anything. They’re the people who took somebody else’s invention and made it commercially viable. That’s sort of who I am. **What’s the bigger picture of milk?** Milk is an unresolved, 10,000-year-old controversy. When you think about it, it was a pretty weird thing to begin with, the idea that we could replace mothers with secretions from animals. Whether milk is good for you has been fought over. In recent years they’ve come up with new things to fight about: GMO and organic and hormones. **Will we eventually run out of commodities to explain?** Yeah, most commodities aren’t very well-suited. I do think there are people just going through commodities, trying to decide on one to write a book on. 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