Salt

August 6, 2001
If this book's organization gracefully accommodated the breadth of its subjects, it would be a small masterpiece. Unfortunately, a scattershot structure and an awkward translation mar this project, which includes portions that did not appear in the original French edition. Clearly extremely learned, Laszlo writes knowledgeably about everything from a Japanese adage meaning "to salt the greens" to the history of Venetian salt production. These brief sections are linked only in the most cursory way, however, and his tangents frequently carry him far afield, as when he moves from discussing the gabelle, or French salt tax, to addressing taxation in general. The fact that salt is used to create chlorine and can be transformed into PVC or vinyl leads to a rumination on Howard Johnson's motel-restaurants and his wonder at air-conditioning when he moved stateside in the 1960s. He prefaces each chapter of this appealing but frustrating work with a preview of the coming material rather than an effective introduction. While Laszlo's style is rambling and conversational, the translation is jarringly formal, with such clunky language as "this astute way of combining salt preservation with the beginnings of a digestion process using proteolytic enzymes was a revolutionary technique." Much of Laszlo's material is intriguing, and his literacy about everything from chemistry to philosophy provides a helpful perspective on this basic element, but ultimately these choppy pieces never cohere.

July 1, 2001
French chemist Laszlo here contributes to the seemingly endless flow of histories of various victuals. The author approaches the subject from a multidisciplinary perspective and has written this book "for the public at large but also as a pedagogical utopia." He writes in a verbose and ostentatious style with a profligacy of four- and five-syllable words. Salt has had a far-reaching effect on human history with an impact on politics, language, trade, and taxes, just to name a few. The author explains this by parsing Eastern proverbs and drawing complex analogies. For example, the opening of Balzac's Beatrix takes place on the Guernade peninsula (where salt is harvested). This invokes an almost three-page meditation in which Laszlo concludes that the novelist creates a "fortiori beyond the social." Salt has many such digressions, meanderings, and asides. Salt may be essential for human survival, but this is not an essential purchase. [In the fall, Walker is publishing a history of salt by Mark Kurlansky. Ed.] Tom Vincent, Wake Cty. P.L., Raleigh, NC

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.