The Basque History of the World

by Kurlansky, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780802713490
• ISBN10: 0802713491
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

The Basques. "They are a mythical people, almost an imagined people," writes Mark Kurlansky. Living in seven provinces in a small corner of Spain and France in a land that is marked on no maps except their own, straddling the rugged Pyrenees Mountains, the Basques are a puzzling contradiction--they are Europe's oldest nation without ever having been a country.

Author Biography

Mark Kurlansky began his career as a foreign correspondent writing about the last years of Francoism in Spain, especially in the Basque provinces, and he has returned there annually for the past twenty-five years. He is the author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, which won the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing, and also of A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny, and A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Maps	ix
Introduction: The Island and the World	1	(12)
Part One THE SURVIVAL OF EUSKAL HERRIA
The Basque Cake	13	(5)
The Basque Myth	18	(9)
The Basque Problem	27	(16)
The Basque Whale	43	(22)
The Basque Saint	65	(15)
The Basque Billy Goat	80	(23)
The Wealth of Non-Nations	103	(31)
Part Two THE DAWN OF EUSKADI
The Basque Onomatopoeia	129	(5)
The Basque Beret	134	(19)
The Basque Ear	153	(24)
Gernika	177	(29)
The Potato Time	206	(18)
Speaking Christian	224	(18)
Eventually Night Falls	242	(25)
Part Three EUSKADI ASKATUTA
Slippery Maketos	259	(8)
The Great Opportunity	267	(18)
Checks and Balances	285	(23)
Surviving Democracy	308	(18)
The Nation	326	(26)
Postscript: The Death of a Basque Pig	352	(8)
The Basque Thank You	360	(2)
Bibliography	362	(11)
Index of Proper Nouns	373