Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky. Specifically, it will answer this question: "What role did codfish have in the discovery of America?" Cod and America go hand in hand, and after reading this book, it is easy to see why. Cod were the sustenance of life for many of the world's people, from the Basques to the Norsemen, and following the cod led these earliest explorers to the shores of North America.

While most people think it was Christopher Columbus who first discovered North America, but that is not really the truth. Records show that Norse Vikings, like Leif Eiriksson, found the continent of North America as early as the tenth century, calling it first "Woodland" and then "Vineland" as they moved down the coast. Kurlansky writes, "Woodland could have been Newfoundland, Nova Scotia or Maine, all three of which are wooded. But...
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