Product Description

The cow. The most industrious animal in the world. A beast central to human existence since time began, it has played a vital role in our history not only as a source of food, but also as a means of labor, an economic resource, an inspiration for art, and even as a religious icon. Prehistoric people painted it on cave walls; explorers, merchants, and landowners traded it as currency; many cultures worshipped it as a god. So how did it come to occupy the sorry state it does today—more factory product than animal?

In Beef, Andrew Rimas and Evan D. G. Fraser answer that question, telling the story of cattle in its entirety. From the powerful auroch, a now extinct beast once revered as a mystical totem, to the dairy cows of seventeenth-century Holland to the frozen meat patties and growth hormones of today, the authors deliver an engaging panoramic view of the cow's long and colorful history.

Peppered with lively anecdotes, recipes, and culinary tidbits, Beef tells a story that spans the globe, from ancient Mediterranean bullfighting rings to the rugged grazing grounds of eighteenth-century England, from the quiet farms of Japan's Kobe beef cows to crowded American stockyards to remote villages in East Africa, home of the Masai, a society to which cattle mean everything. Leaving no stone unturned in its exploration of the cow's legacy, the narrative serves not only as a compelling story but as a call to arms, offering practical solutions for confronting the current condition of the wasteful beef and dairy industries.

Beef is a captivating history of an animal whose relationship with humanity has shaped the world as we know it, and readers will never look at steak the same way again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #231995 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-01
• Released on: 2008-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While Americans may take a plentiful supply of hamburger patties for granted, the days of easy beef are threatened by climate change, dwindling Great Plains aquifers drained by irrigation and an unsustainable business model's thin profit margins, argue the authors of this lively and unsettling history-cum-polemic. Rimas and Fraser preface their sobering assessment with a panoramic history; they write vividly about the semimystical aurochs that became extinct in 1627, the Spanish bullfighting tradition, the African Masai's continuing reverence for cows, plagues that ravaged European herds in the 19th century, and the cowboy era of great cattle drives. Once fattened entirely on pasture grass, cattle are now confined to feedlots for half their lives, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics and stuffed with grain they aren't naturally equipped to eat, sacrificing quality for quantity. The authors lament that cows ceased to be animals and they became commodities, and they certainly aren't antimeat; their colorful account is well-seasoned with a series of culinary interludes for such dishes as bull's tail stew, steak tartare, beef jerky and, of course, the great American hamburger. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Distinctive among the many titles currently assessing the role of carnivorism in modern life, Rimas and Fraser’s spirited approach examines the evolution of the role of beef consumption and its varying effects on diverse cultures. The aurochs depicted in primitive cave paintings offer evidence that early humans were already interacting with cattle in wild state. East Africa’s Masai still engage in exuberant communal hopping after gorging on fire-roasted beef ribs and blood-based stew. The Spanish tradition of bullfighting has less to do with food than art: it reflects the tragic, the performance played out in the corrida strikingly similar to the drama acted out in Shakespeare’s theater. Rimas and Fraser recount the little-remembered but devastating effects of rinderpest, an infectious disease that decimated Europe’s cattle into the nineteenth century, efforts to contain it thwarted by shortsighted, greedy entrepreneurs. A few well-chosen recipes break up the authors’ narrative. --Mark Knoblauch

About the Author

Andrew Rimas is a journalist and the managing editor of the Improper Bostonian Magazine. He has worked as an associate editor for Boston Magazine and his writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, Boston Globe Magazine, and the Ottawa Citizen, among other publications. He lives in Boston.

Customer Reviews

An offal good time
The sub-title of `Beef` hints of an "untold story". Actually, it turns out, there is not a single story, but many stories, each from 1 paragraph to a few pages long. These wide ranging mini stories, encyclopedic snippets really, are categorized into chapters along chronological order, from pre-history to the present. Such a presentation, without a central narrative, would not hold many readers attention, so the authors also took some trips to exotic locations and weave in travel tales related to beefy places and people. This is a standard creative non-fiction technique commonly found in books like Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History although the overall effect here is muted because there is no "mystery" to create tension. However we do get a few recipes, including how to make cheddar cheese.

The last chapter of the book is the best, from the 20th century to the present. It suggests the current industrialized methods of raising beef are unsustainable and the future will see changes. The earlier chapters about the history of beef are interesting, but prior to the 19th century, I found it somewhat meandering. It's not a scholarly or definitive treatment. I noticed a few mistakes; the authors use the term "Dark Ages", which has been largely deprecated by medieval historians; and they mistakenly use "sweetmeat" to refer to offal.(*)

Sort of like how a cow is made up of many cuts of beef, `Beef` is a a number of styles and techniques weaved together. History, travel, journalism, recipes. Some parts are more interesting than others, and it will largely depend on what the reader already knows and is interested in. It's a short book that can be read easily in a day (or cross USA plane trip).

(*) Sweetmeat is bread, sweetbread is meat. Strange as it sounds, the Oxford English Dictionary confirms it. Since I am reading an Advanced Readers Copy, this may be corrected in the final edition.

Man's best friend isn't who you think it is.
It's hard, if not impossible, to choose an animal that has impacted the fate of humankind more than the bovine. Beef chronicles our relationship with the cow, from Gods to hamburgers. This book is a chronicle written in essay format, exploring various historical and cultural ideas that have formed our society based on how cattle have affected this.

I think...it sounds goofy perhaps, but this is a book everyone should read. Yes, you vegetarians, too! Because while morality may dictate whether or not eating meat is good or bad, this is the history of how Western culture got to where it was - on the back and with the flesh of the cow.

Some of the things in here may disturb you, bother you, or surprise you, even. The tales range from the grizzly and extremely cultural bullfights of Spain, the worship of cow-related deities in the ancient near and middle east, and the modern meat and milk industry.

It's more of a chronicle of humanity's distancing from our resources. We've gone from venerating our food and respecting it (even the plants - all food dies to give us life, corny as it may be, it's true), to seeing it as merely a commodity. So, this book isn't "just about cows", nor is it about why we should go back to worshiping Daisy or throwing some spears at bulls. It is about an ancient and almost tremulous relationship that we, as humans, have with a creature even older than we are in terms of history.

It is highly philosophical, but also extremely educational. I can't recommend this book enough, especially if you are becoming more conscious of where food comes from. Even if you don't eat meat, throw some thanks out to the bovines when you see them. If it wasn't for our mutual histories intertwining, we probably wouldn't be here.

Horns and Hoofs
This is a delightful history of cattle from ancient times until now. Well written and quite interesting not only for those who live in beef producing areas, but also for anyone who wants to know the historical background of the great American cheeseburger. I ordered this book because both of my grandfathers were cattlemen. I would have liked for the writers to spend a little more time on the lore of the west and the culture of the cowboy (which is why the book received 4 stars instead of 5). One of my favorite paragraphs in the whole book was on this subject of cowboy culture:

"Cowboys left a cultural legacy far disproportionate to their numbers, their acheivement, or their economic impact. To list all the cowboy movies, musical acts, clothing lines, and political apery would take a compendium of monstrous, even Texan, proportions, and to analyze its meaning would tax a rawhide Baudrillard. Suffice to say that in large parts of America, a Stetson is equivalent to a monk's tonsure - it's a badge of belief. Instead of believing in the holy apostolic church, though, its wearers believe in 'individualism,' in steel guitars, and in nostalgia for the open prairie." (page 167).

I wear my "tonsure" every day and this book is a good guide to the "apostolic succession" of those who wore it before me.