Salt: A World History

To start with answering the question by Halim, I am OK.
Ever had to buy a newspaper for 5 SP and had nothing but 500 SP and questioned yourself whether to buy it or not and stand the hassle of the seller complaining of having no change??? What is the matter with this change thing? And the worst thing is that if a seller has no change, most of the time he will send you on a holy crusade to find a change for a big bill that no one will do for you, because everyone wants to keep change for himself. And it is almost as if those storekeepers don't care if they sell you or not as long as they don't bother themselves. Too bad we don't have debit cards up and running here.
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I needed a newspaper for home, and had a single paper currency of the 500 SP order. To save myself sellers whining I usually look for something else that is a bit more expensive to buy. This time I was browsing the magazine racks and my eye fell on this book mentioned above. Why would one want to write about the history of salt?? It was interesting to see this one. The book is one of the known series "عالم المعرفة" from Kuwait, A monthly periodical featuring translated books of importance.
The interesting thing about this book is that 43,000 copies were printed. This is of course targeting the 200 million Arabs or more in the Arab world. Meaning that one out of 465 persons is expected to buy a copy. I am sure the ratio is way less than this; because Arabs are avid readers (I can't help myself smiling when I write this). And the biggest proof of that is that if you look most new books that are printed in Syria at least, a first edition book has only 1,000 copies printed. Only one thousand!!! That is one book for every 18,000 Syrians. And some people are proud they made to the second edition print...
Anyway, to finish talking about the book, it is an interesting one. It never occurred to me that salt could be a product that is expensive, can have serious taxes on it to help sponsoring wars and such, can be the subject of wars, or be important as to be almost considered a precious thing. The book goes over way of producing salt in the old ages and until now, occasionally food recipes, and the relationship between salt and hunting, fishing, wars, slavery, food, politics, economy, and others. An interesting read for those interested.
The only bad thing about it is that the author (Mark Kurlansky) jumps in time back and forth as if he has the ultimate time machine, which is headache-producing at times. I hope some will find this helpful. And I hope we start to see more prints of local books in the future.