Raising Steaks the Life and Times of American Beef

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 participatelike the cattlemen chefs feedlot operators and scientists Fussell talks within 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