Eating Animals

From Strand Bookstore

On the brink of fatherhood, writer Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf, set about to find answers for himself. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, EATING ANIMALS explores the many stories we use to justify our eating habits - folklore and pop culture, family habits & national myth. A tour de force.

From the Publisher

The award-winning author of Everything Is Illuminated exposes common misconceptions about how animals are slaughtered and processed for food, drawing on sources from popular culture to national tradition to reveal how the meat industry misrepresents its practices.

From the Publisher

The award-winning author of Everything Is Illuminated exposes common misconceptions about how animals are slaughtered and processed for food, drawing on sources from popular culture to national tradition to reveal how the meat industry misrepresents its practices.

Review

National Public Radio
"EATING ANIMALS isn't just an anti-meat screed, or an impassioned case for vegetarianism. Instead, Foer tells a story that is part memoir and part investigative report. And it's a book that takes America's meat-dominated diet to task."

Review

Susan Salter Reynolds - Los Angeles Times
"[T]his book, its author warns, is not a case for vegetarianism. It's a case for being informed and taking responsibility....You might not like being lectured on this topic, and Foer is not a philosopher or a logician -- so his arguments now and then veer into the shrill zone. For some readers, this will be the final straw, the book that finally makes you forgo the Thanksgiving turkey in favor of 10,000 other available dishes."

Review

Elizabeth Kolbert - New Yorker
"EATING ANIMALS closes with a turkey-less Thanksgiving. As a holiday, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But this is Foer's point. We are, he suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer's credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us."

Review

Jennifer Reese - Entertainment Weekly
"[Foer's] unflinching insistence that we take stringent moral inventory of our eating habits constitutes this book's greatest strengths....[W]hile your ethical standards regarding the treatment of animals may be less (or more) exacting than Foer's, his book will, at the very least, make you think hard about what those standards are, and why you are--or are not--living by them."

Review

Joshua David Stein - Bold Type
"Reading EATING ANIMALS is like getting a colonoscopy: It's important and salutary and everyone should do it. But if it were just a bit more pleasant, or done with a drop more lube, it would be a lot easier to make it a regular thing."

More about the book

Jonathan Safran Foer recounts the results of his intrepid investigation into factory farming and industrial food production, an endeavor which convinced him of the benefits of a vegetarian diet. Foer, who had been an on-again/off-again vegetarian since childhood, was motivated to solidify his stand on diet by his impending fatherhood. He identifies and investigates the numerous myths that people tell themselves to justify their consumption of meat, from concerns about nutrition to cultural interests to family compromise, and systematically addresses each one through his own experience and his enthusiastic research, which included breaking into a factory farm in the middle of the night to observe their practices. Written with the same compelling wit and vigor which made Foer's first two novels such popular and critical successes, EATING ANIMALS consistently entertains even as it enlightens readers on the extensive detriments of remaining carnivorous.