You'll also find deeper questions about our need "to reevaluate whether fish are at their root expendable seafood or wildlife desperately in need of our compassion." In this passionate study, part investigative journalism, part travelogue, part personal memoir about fishing for wide-mouth bass as a boy in Connecticut, Greenberg asks, "Must we eliminate all wildness from the sea and replace it with some kind of controlled system, or can wildness be understood and managed well enough to keep humanity and the marine world in balance?"

Four Fish builds on Mark Kurlansky's pioneering 1998 microhistory Cod, but it's more than simply Cod-plus-three. Greenberg notes that, just as human consumption of mammals and birds has narrowed to four sources each — cows, pigs, sheep and goats in the meat department; and chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese for poultry — "four archetypes of fish flesh" have come to dominate our fish counters: salmon, bass, cod and tuna.

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