The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town

by Mark Kurlansky

Overview

"A marvelous, compelling tale"(Rocky Mountain News) from the New York Times bestselling author of Salt and Cod.

Gloucester, Massachusetts, America's oldest fishing port, is defined by the culture of commercial fishing. But the threat of over-fishing, combined with climate change and pollution, is endangering a way of life, not only in Gloucester but in coastal cities all over the world. And yet, according to Kurlansky, it doesn't have to be this way. Engagingly written and filled with rich history, delicious anecdotes, colorful characters, and local recipes, The Last Fish Tale is Kurlansky's most urgent story, "an engrossing multi-layered portrait of a fishing community that can be read for pure pleasure as well as being a campaigning plea for the environment" (Financial Times).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594483745
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/05/2009
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	370,929
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including The Food of a Younger Land, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History; 1968: The Year That Rocked the World; and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. He lives in New York City.

Hometown:

New York, NY

Date of Birth:

December 7, 1948

Place of Birth:

Hartford, CT

Education:

Butler University, B.A. in Theater, 1970

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The Last Fish Tale"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Mark Kurlansky.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Prologue: Pole Walkers     xv
The First Gloucester Story     3
A Tale of Woe     19
The Island Named Gloucester     29
Scooning     35
The Replacements     60
Among the Rocks     90
This Gloire of Gloucester     106
While Gloucester Burns     124
The Fish Is in Us     141
The Sea and the Seaside     172
Surviving on the Mainland     219
Bibliography     247
Acknowledgments     255
Index     257

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A heartfelt tribute...as beautifully-written as the fondest and best-crafted eulogy."
-Boston Globe

"A colorful history of Gloucester...rich, varied, and satisfying, just like a good chowder."
-Entertainment Weekly

Editorial Reviews

"A heartfelt tribute...as beautifully-written as the fondest and best-crafted eulogy."
-Boston Globe

"A colorful history of Gloucester...rich, varied, and satisfying, just like a good chowder."
-Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher

Bursting with ironies, Mark Kurlansky's epic history of Gloucester sweeps from the 17th century, when English colonists starved amid the world's greatest marine abundance, to the 21st century, when opulent resorts line the coast of a depleted ocean. As Kurlansky tells us at the outset, "A fish tale exaggerates to make things look bigger. It is triumphal." But he calls this book a "Gloucester story," which is "just the opposite"—"a story of miserable irony…with a sad ending."
—The Washington Post

H. Bruce Franklin

Bestselling author Kurlansky (Cod; The Big Oyster) provides a delightful, intimate history and contemporary portrait of the quintessential northeastern coastal fishing town: Gloucester, Mass., on Cape Anne. Illustrated with his own beautifully executed drawings, Kurlansky's book vividly depicts the contemporary tension between the traditional fishing trade and modern commerce, which in Gloucester means beach-going tourists. One year ago, a beach preservation group enraged fishermen by seeking to harvest 105 acres of prime fishing ground for sand to deposit on the shoreline. Wealthy yacht owners compete with fishermen for prime dockage, driving up prices. Fishermen also contend with federal limits on their catches in an effort to maintain sustainable fisheries. But while cod are protected from extinction, the fishermen are not. Some boats must go 100 or more miles out to sea-a danger for small boats with few crew members. Tragedies abound, while one, that of the swordfish boat Andrea Gail, documented by Sebastian Junger in A Perfect Storm, brought even more tourists to Gloucester. (June 3)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Kurlansky's 1997 best seller, Cod, was subtitled A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. His latest work can also be described as a biography, this time of the fishing town of Gloucester, MA. Although Gloucester is unique, its history serves as an exemplar of the changing nature of commercial fishing in the North Atlantic, especially regarding people, equipment, and target species. It also serves as a means of examining the problems of modern fishing towns as they try to find new ways of surviving in a world of collapsing fish populations without losing the best of their heritage. Kurlansky is a skillful writer, holding readers' interest and educating them at the same time with his mixture of facts, anecdotes, and even recipes. All of us, not just those living on the coast, should be aware of the issues he raises here. An excellent complement to the author's Cod and Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell as well as to Eric Jay Dolan's Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America; highly recommended for all public, high school, and college libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ2/1/08; library marketing campaign planned.-Ed.]
—Margaret Rioux

Library Journal

Kurlansky (Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea, 2006, etc.) brings his storytelling elan to the fishing town of Gloucester, Mass. Its fine harbor, abundance of fish and reasonable climate attracted one of the earliest European settlements in America to this sheltered spot on the Cape Ann peninsula. In 1623, employees of an English fish-trading company constructed a few huts, cured some cod and departed to sell it in Bilbao, leaving behind 14 farmers. Gloucester has been internationally known ever since, and Kurlansky fills in the background to explain how it evolved into "an Irish, Scandinavian, Portuguese, Sicilian town" dedicated to its fishery. Such a multicultural place suits this author perfectly; he can revel in the local color, peek into the corners and under the floorboards. Topical chapters sketch the town's tribal insularity and self-sufficiency, the tragedies wreaked by fierce storms at sea and the milky light that has drawn such artists as Fitz Hugh Lane, Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley and Edward Hopper to Gloucester. Kurlansky offers a broad, intelligent examination into the decline of the fisheries. "If the fishermen are following the regulators and the regulators are listening to the scientists, and yet the fish stocks continue to be depleted," he asks, "who is getting it wrong?" The devouring maw of tourists and developers, attracted by the ambience they speedily kill, raises the specter of vanishing cultural diversity and economic egalitarianism. On a more cheerful note, Kurlansky celebrates the special requirements of Gloucester's famous greased-pole walk: "It is generally recognized that to be a successful pole walker a contestant must betremendously brave, extremely agile, and extraordinarily drunk."A lucent addition to Gloucester's town treasury, featuring a wealth of dramatic stories. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy/Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews

With the sprightly tone and buoyant pace of a PBS special, Grover Gardner describes the rise and decline of the New England fishing industry and its effect on the unique Massachusetts town of Gloucester. He ably replicates the voices of the immigrants who manned successive fleets and often perished in rough weather. As the town became connected to suburban Boston via Route 128, shoreline real estate values skyrocketed as fishing jobs disappeared with the cod and the haddock. The filming of THE PERFECT STORM helped, but only temporarily. The story includes comparisons with villages in Sicily and Cornwall as well as recipes for which listeners might need shorthand. What resident artists like Winslow Homer immortalized in paint, Gardner has delightfully portrayed in audio. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2008 - AudioFile