title: Salt: A World History
author:  Mark Kurlansky 
description: Homer called it a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. As Mark Kurlansky so brilliantly relates here, salt has shaped civilization from the beginning, and its story is a glittering often surprising part of the history of mankind. So valuable that it has often served as currency and still does in places today, salt inspired the earliest trade routes across unknown oceans and the remotest deserts. Wars have been fought over salt, and while salt taxes secured empires across Europe and Asia, they have also inspired revolution - Gandhi's salt march in 1930 began the overthrow of British rule in India. From the rural Sichuan province where the last home-made soya sauce is made to the Cheshire brine springs that supplied salt around the globe, Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of world history, a multilayered masterpiece that blends political, commercial, scientific, religious and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale.
zlib_text: Mark Kurlansky
  USA
  Salt
  2002, EN, 117761 words
  Homer called it a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear
  to the gods. As Mark Kurlansky so brilliantly relates here, salt has
  shaped civilisation from the beginning, and its story is a glittering, often
  surprising part of the history of mankind. Wars have been fought over
  salt and, while salt taxes secured empires across Europe and Asia, they
  have also inspired revolution – Gandhi’s salt march in 1930 began the
  overthrow of British rule in India. From the rural Sichuan province
  where the last home-made soya sauce is made to the Cheshire brine
  springs that supplied salt around the globe, Mark Kurlansky has
  produced a kaleidoscope of world history, a multilayered masterpiece
  that blends political, commercial, scientific, religious and culinary
  records into a rich and memorable tale.
  
  I
  Introduction
  The Rock
  bought the rock in Spanish Catalonia, in the rundown hillside mining
  town of Cardona. An irregular pink trapezoid with 