SALT: Grain of Life

If this book's organization gracefully accommodated the breadth of its subjects, it would be a small masterpiece. Unfortunately, a scattershot structure and an awkward translation mar this project, which includes portions that did not appear in the original French edition. Clearly extremely learned, Laszlo writes knowledgeably about everything from a Japanese adage meaning "to salt the greens" to the history of Venetian salt production. These brief sections are linked only in the most cursory way, however, and his tangents frequently carry him far afield, as when he moves from discussing the gabelle, or French salt tax, to addressing taxation in general. The fact that salt is used to create chlorine and can be transformed into PVC or vinyl leads to a rumination on Howard Johnson's motel-restaurants and his wonder at air-conditioning when he moved stateside in the 1960s. He prefaces each chapter of this appealing but frustrating work with a preview of the coming material rather than an effective introduction. While Laszlo's style is rambling and conversational, the translation is jarringly formal, with such clunky language as "this astute way of combining salt preservation with the beginnings of a digestion process using proteolytic enzymes was a revolutionary technique." Much of Laszlo's material is intriguing, and his literacy about everything from chemistry to philosophy provides a helpful perspective on this basic element, but ultimately these choppy pieces never cohere. (Aug.)