Book Critique Gastronome 101: How capitalism killed the sturgeons Paul Vecsei Warnell School of Forest Resources, Fisheries Division, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, U.S.A. (e-mail: pjv3402@smokey.forestry.uga.edu) Saffron, I. 2002. Caviar, The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy. Broadway Books. 270 pp. US $23.95 It was admirable good; beyond what can be imagin’d John Perry, Astrakhan 1770s, upon tasting Russian caviar I had a fairytale first time caviar experience. I was returning from the International Sturgeon Symposium held in Piacenza, Italy, and found someone already in my seat on the aircraft. The cabin crew whisked me off to first class. I still remember the exact moment it happened. The blond stewardess appeared from behind the curtain with smoked Norwegian salmon and that marvellous 1 kg tin of beluga caviar. Fully reclined, with my face repeatedly steaming from hot towels, I savoured copious quantities of caviar, as the sun glittered on the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. It was without question, sheer opulence. My second time with caviar was much less glamorous. It was 1 year later, a very rainy morning on the Volga in early May. I sat in a room painted 3 months earlier, which refused to dry, causing my dilapidated blazer to become layered with patches of green pseudo-paint from the walls. In front of me was a large container filled with fresh caviar. It was actually too fresh to be given the noble title caviar since it was the remainder of over-ripe eggs from a female beluga, spawned artificially the previous night. We salted it ourselves and then gently mixed the silver-black eggs and voila! The caviar was further glorified by the fact that we were eating roach, Rutilus rutilus, caught inside the sewer system along the Volga. Saffron takes the reader on a whirlwind history tour of world sturgeon fisheries in Caviar. The sturgeon’s industrial-scale slaughter soon becomes a parable of the history of industrialization and our historical lack of conservation or sustainable use of a resource. Time and again, the naı¨ve notion of reaping nature until there is nothing left is an underlying theme. The author has painstakingly researched the topic of caviar. More interesting, she often picks up on where the caviar story overlaps with the greater currents of history. Caviar examines the logistical complexities of bringing a perishable produce such as caviar, to distant markets. As Saffron states: ‘Caviar is handmade, an artisanal food and its ephemeral nature is what limited the consumption of caviar for so many years’. With the advent of icehouses and more rapid means of transportation, caviar shed its stigma as a local, perishable delicacy. It was now ready for mass marketing in an indus- trializing world. The nouveau riche of Europe’s Belle E ´ poque made caviar a status symbol, a del- icacy gaining aristocratic status. As new forms of transportation and preservation brought the world closer together, getting caviar to market continued to be a major undertaking, with numerous lengthy stages. This caused prices to remain high and the continued high cost associated with caviar became its defining quality and allure. Caviar’s journey from ‘poor man’s food to a rich man’s snack’ is told in a most animated combination of travel prose and interviews. Saf- fron’s characters run the full gauntlet from sophisticates to the sweaty-slimy self made entrepreneurs. The book has a cast as wide ranging Environmental Biology of Fishes (2005) 73: 111–116 Ó Springer 2005