An engaging, eclectic examination of the role of beef in the formation of American myth and reality.
Food writer, historian and “full red-blooded carnivore” Fussell (Masters of American Cookery, 2006, etc.) finds beef, specifically steak, to be the most American of foods.
It is, like us, “mobile, improvised, casual, egalitarian, reliable, raw, bloody, and violent,” she writes. Yet within the world of late-19th-century beef production, the fantasy of an autonomous cowboy freely riding the range rounding up the stray calves had little to do with the reality of an industry reliant on technology (the refrigerated railroad cars that transported butchered meat) and the division of labor in its vast meat-packing plants. Today, the author reports, 30 million cattle are harvested each year, held in feedlots holding 100,000 or more steers. They are fed corn—or candy bars, pretzels, whatever is available—quickly slaughtered and dismembered within automated systems, wrapped in Cryovac (which keeps the meat pink no matter its age) and sent to market. It is a secretive, largely unaccountable process that robs us of any sense of human connection with the animals we eat. This troubles Fussell, as does the rush to fulfill America’s insatiable demand for beef that may expose us to such dangers as mad cow disease and the E. coli virus. Her thesis is not new, but the author displays a captivating gift for capturing the essence of places and people. Though she clearly admires maverick ranchers who eschew feedlots and still graze their herds, slaughter and market locally, this is no mere jeremiad against industrialized beef. Fussell explores with humor and obvious pleasure the culture of cattle as well: the rituals of the rodeo, how to buy just the right cowboy hat, the joys of a good steakhouse and a fine steak. She even provides tips on how to cook the perfect steak and shares some favorite recipes she has collected along the way.
An engaging, eclectic examination of the role of beef in the formation of American myth and reality.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-101202-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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