When we bite into a steak's charred crust and pink interior,
we bite into contradictions that have branded our nation from the
start. We taste the competing 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 witness rugged
individualism and corporate technology collide when we breed, feed,
slaughter, package, and distribute the animals we turn into meat.
And we participate--like the cattlemen, chefs, feedlot operators,
and scientists Fussell talks with--in the mythology that inspires
cowboys to become technocrats and presidents to play cowboy.
A celebration and an elegy for a uniquely American Dream,
"Raising Steaks" takes an "unflinching look at the ethical and
environmental implications of modern meat ... yet leaves us with a
powerful hankering for a thick T-bone grilled rare"--"Michael
Pollan"