The cod—wars have been fought over it, national diets have been based on it, revolutions have been triggered by it, and livelihoods and economies have depended on it. Also the author of The Big Oyster, Salt, and The Food of a Younger Nation, Mark Kurlansky won the James Beard Award for this chronicle of explorers, merchants, writers, chefs, and fishermen whose lives have been interwoven with the prolific cod, from the Viking boatmen to Clarence Birdseye. Kurlansky chronicles the cod wars of the 16th and the 20th centuries, reels in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages, and shows how the most profitable fish in history now faces extinction at our hands.