Well, perhaps the title is a touch harsh. But only a touch. Mark Kurlansky, the author, is certainly an engaging writer; after reading his descriptions of the pink salt mountain of Catalonia and the great underground salt mines buried in the bayou of Lousiana I was left with a strong desire to see them myself; he provides a wide-ranging overview of the history of salt both in the West and East. There’s some neat recipies, too.
There’s just one problem: glaring errors of fact on topics I know a little about make me wonder if the whole lot is trash.
The first one that leapt out at me was the assertion that:
a group of religious extremists based in the town of Albi and known as Albigensians, launched a series of crusades to cleanse the region of “heretics”. Asked how to recognise a heretic from a true believer, one Albegensian leader, according to legend, said, “Kill them all. God knows his own.”
This is so far from accurate I assumed it must be some sort of dreadful editing error; perhaps an uncaught transposition. Otherwise the author would have to be an astonishingly poor, or dishonest, researcher.
Discussing the American Civil War, he describes Pickett’s charge as reaching:
…the most northerly point of any Confederate in combat
…which is also most certainly inaccurate; there are at least a couple of candidates, and, yes, it’s a milder error than the one above. But hell, I’m no guru, and these stuck out to me like dog’s balls. Well written pop history is one thing; well written pop history that is (at best) shoddily researched and (at worst) favours a nice turn of phrase over any semblance of accuracy is of little use. At best it’s a jumping off point to read authors who can get it right; at worst it ends up misleading a bunch of people.