Synopses & Reviews
In
Raising Steaks, Betty Fussell saddles up for a spirited ride across America on the trail of our most iconic food.
When we bite into a steak's charred crust and pink interior, Fussell finds that we bite into contradictions that have branded our national identity from the start. We taste the colliding fantasies of British pastoralists and Spanish ranchers that erupted in land wars between a wet-weather East and a desert West. We savor the ideas of wilderness and progress that clashed when we replaced buffalo with cattle, and then cowboys with industrial machines. We take in the contradictions of rugged individualism and the corporate technology that we use to breed, feed, slaughter, package, and distribute the animals we turn into meat. And we participate as do the cattlemen and chefs, feedlot operators and rodeo stars, boot makers and scientists Fussell talks with in the mythology that inspires cowboys to become technocrats and presidents to play cowboy.
Raising Steaks is a celebration of, and an elegy for, a uniquely American Dream.
Review
"Less harsh and judgmental than many critics, Fussell worries most about the dangers of the beef industry's sheer immensity." Booklist
Review
"An engaging, eclectic examination of the role of beef in the formation of American myth and reality." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
In Raising Steaks, Betty Fussell saddles up for a spirited ride across America on the trail of our most iconic food in a celebration of, and an elegy for, a uniquely American Dream.
About the Author
Betty Fussell is the author of ten previous books, including The Story of Corn and My Kitchen Wars. A contributor to the New York Times, the New Yorker, Saveur, Food & Wine, Gastronomica, and other publications, she has also lectured widely on food history. Western born, she lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
The Cowboy and the Machine 1
Beefy Boys 8
Breaking the Wild 27
Playing Cowboy 61
The New Range Wars 82
Circling the Wagons 99
Buffalo Commons 122
Greening Beef 136
Good Breeding 149
The Smell of Greeley 172
Slaughterhouse Blues 191
Riding Point for the Industry 219
Mad Cows and Ethanol 248
Beef: Itand#8217;s Whatand#8217;s for Dinner 285
The United Steaks of America 303
Acknowledgments 345
Permissions Acknowledgments 347
Endnotes 349
Selected Bibliography 374
Index 384