This is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Kia Miakana Tis. What'd you eat for breakfast?

I'm willing to bet at least half the people listening right now ate a meal that included egg.

If you're not vegan or allergic, chances are most of the food you eat involves that special

little oval orb.

A new book, Egg, by Lizzie Stark, shares the wide and ranging history of this incredibly versatile food and symbol.

Here she is with Here Now's Jane Clayson.

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Eggs are used in vaccine cultivation, decoration, and of course the egg is essential to many

a delicious dish. Author Lizzie Stark boils down the history of the egg in her exquisite new book,

Egg A Dozen Overtures.

Lizzie Stark joins us now.

Welcome to the program.

Thanks so much for having me.

Well, the book is so interesting and fun and just chock full of egg facts and stories.

As you say, the egg has played a major role throughout history and across cultures.

Give us an example of that. Well, the egg is central to world mythology. It appears so frequently in myths that mythologists have given it the name the cosmic egg. So a good example of this is in Finnish myth. There is a

bird flying over the Lady of the Waters, and she lays an egg on the Lady of the Water's leg,

...