Why The Oyster Has The Pearl

Explains why oysters make pearls and dangerous snakes have diamond-shaped heads.

Contrary to a generally held view that pearls are found by chance in oysters, almost all are now produced from farms. This book is a comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the biology of pearl oysters, their anatomy, reproduction, genetics, diseases, etc. It considers how they are farmed from spawning and culturing larvae in hatcheries to adults in the ocean; how various environmental factors, including pollution affect them; and how modern techniques are successfully producing large numbers of cultured pearls. This is the ultimate reference source on pearl oysters and the culture of pearls, written and edited by a number of scientists who are world experts in their fields. Comprehensive treatment of pearl oyster biology and pearl culture Written by the top world authorities Highly illustrated and figured Of practical relevance to a broad readership, from professional biologists to those involved in the practicalities and practice of pearl production

A true story, this fascinating page-turner demystifies what happens after we die and will forever change your views about life, death and the hereafter. Annie Kagan is not a medium or a psychic, she did not die and come back to life; in fact, when she was awakened by her deceased brother, she thought perhaps she had gone a little crazy In The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There’s Life After Death, Kagan shares the extraordinary story of her after death communications (ADC) with her brother Billy, who began speaking to her just weeks after his unexpected death. One of the most detailed and profound ADC’s ever recorded, Kagan’s book takes the reader beyond the near-death experience. Billy’s vivid, real-time account of his on-going journey through the mysteries of death will change the way you think about life. Death and your place in the Universe. In his foreword, Dr. Raymond Moody, author of Life after Life, explains the phenomena of walkers between the worlds, known to us since ancient times, and says that Dr. Kagan’s thought-provoking account is an excellent example.

A round, luminescent pearl is the simplest and most perfect gem. Columbus sought—and found—this precious jewel coveted by his Spanish sovereigns, sparking popularity throughout Europe. Fashion icons Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Grace, and Michelle Obama cherished them, making them iconic. And designer Coco Chanel raised them to new heights, bringing pearls— fake and real—to women everywhere. In Tears of Mermaids, Stephen G. Bloom travels 30,000 miles in an effort to trace a single pearl—from the moment a diver off the coast of Australia scoops an oyster containing a single luminescent pearl from the ocean floor to the instant a woman fastens the clasp of a strand containing the same orb. Bloom chronicles the never-before-told saga of the global pearl trade by gaining access to clandestine outposts in China, the Philippines, French Polynesia and Australia. He infiltrates high-tech pearl farms guarded by gun-toting sentries, farms for pearls in rural China, and even goes backstage at Christie's for a fast and furious auction of the most expensive pearl ever sold. Teeming with rogue humor and uncanny intelligence, Tears of Mermaids weaves a nonstop detective story whose main character is the world's most enduring jewel.

M. F. K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our “poet of the appetites,” here pays tribute to that most enigmatic of ocean creatures, the oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel—and of the pearls sometimes found therein—Fisher describes her mother’s joy at encountering oyster loaf in a girls’ dorm in the 1890s, recalls her own initiation into the “strange cold succulence” of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve’s famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers. Plumbing the “dreadful but exciting” life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose. “Consider the Oyster marks M. F. K. Fisher’s emergence as a storyteller so confident that she can maneuver a reader through a narrative in which recipes enhance instead of interrupt the reader’s attention to the tales. She approaches a recipe as a published dream or wish, and the stories she tells here...are also stories of the pleasures and disillusionments of dreams fulfilled.”—PATRICIA STORACE, The New York Review of Books “Since Lewis Carroll no one had written charmingly about that indecisively sexed bivalve until Mrs. Fisher came along with her Consider the Oyster. Surely this will stand for some time as the most judicious treatment in English.”—CLIFFTON FADIMAN

Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled. For centuries New York was famous for its oysters, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for the wealthy, the poor, and tourists alike, and the primary natural defense against pollution for the city’s congested waterways. Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos–this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the island hunting ground of the Lenape Indians to the death of the oyster beds and the rise of America’s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining chambers. Kurlansky brings characters vividly to life while recounting dramatic incidents that changed the course of New York history. Here are the stories behind Peter Stuyvesant’s peg leg and Robert Fulton’s “Folly”; the oyster merchant and pioneering African American leader Thomas Downing; the birth of the business lunch at Delmonico’s; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of the highest-paid newspaper writers in the city; even “Diamond” Jim Brady, who we discover was not the gourmand of popular legend. With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.

When Pearl's sheltered life shatters in the 1930s when her mother dies, her only option is to move in with poor family relations and shuck oysters in the local plant on Oyster Island, Maryland. Determined to live a morally proper life, the last thing she wants is an affair with a white man, but Caleb, the plant owner, knows a pearl when he sees one. The successful widower is the "oyster king" of the island, but his intense desire for his forbidden new employee, a woman of color, threatens everything he's built. What begins as a private sexual liaison flowers into strong feelings that don't fit the social mores of the island. When their secret is discovered, they risk losing everything. They dared to pluck the pearl, but will their love be strong enough to keep it forever?