What is the author's tone in Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky?

One of the dangers of writing a book form the point of view of salt is that it can be easy to get bogged down in the details and to lose the thread of the overall world history involved. The author avoids this partially through his breezy and anecdotal tone. The narrative is told in a way that makes it seem almost conversational. We are presented with vignettes or stories of people and of things that weave together into a larger story, but that do not linger too long. Like a good story teller that wants to impart enough details for the listener to get the point without boring them, the author skips from scene to scene introducing us to people and places along the way, sometimes dropping threads that he has already established, sometimes picking an old thread up in a novel way.