Title: The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation
Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2000
400 pages
I'm more a fan of natural history than straight up human history, but Kurlansky's Basque history forms a reasonable triptych with his Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World and Salt: A World History--Cod because of the relationship of the Basque to the cod trade and Salt because of its descriptions of pre-national Europe.
Though some sections dragged a bit (for example, the contemporary political scene, which bogged down in details), this was, overall, an enjoyable and sympathetic history, portraying the Basque as more than a furtive people with a terrorist arm who were slaughtered at Guernica. Recipes abound.
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