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    Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World
    Unavailable
    Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World
    Unavailable
    Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World
    Ebook351 pages7 hours

    Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World

    By Andrew Rimas and Dr. Evan Fraser

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061982057
    Unavailable
    Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World
    Author

    Andrew Rimas

    Andrew Rimas is a journalist and the managing editor at the Improper Bostonian magazine; previously he was an associate editor and staff writer at Boston magazine. His work has frequently appeared in those publications, and in The Boston Globe Magazine and The Boston Globe.

    Read more from Andrew Rimas

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    Reviews for Beef

    3.5/5

    13 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A comprehensive overview of the evolution of the modern beef and dairy cows/bulls and the role they've played in inspiring, industrializing and feeding us over the centuries. Rimas and Frazer blaze a wide trail for such a compact book including detailed information on bovine influences in ancient cave art, traditional African Masai tribal customs, iconography in world religions, Spanish bullfighting, international trade law, bioscience/ethics, the settlement of the Americas and world ecology. The authors have successfully strung together a lot of far-flung theology and research reporting into one relatively compact space, but the book devotes a lot more of its early chapters to the historical religious/spiritual significance of cows than I anticipated given the more secular title of the book. Later chapters gravitate to scientific considerations, but they seem just a tad rushed given the expansiveness of the earlier chapters. I must say I appreciated the whimsical inclusion of "Culinary Interludes" and a couple eclectic photographs at regular intervals--it was a nice touch for the foodies. Personally, besides the segments on the Masai, I found the most interesting tidbits at the near end of the book (I don't want to spoil it, but it has to do with water consumption). Bottom Line: It's not quite as well-written as "Salt", but this book will definitely make you appreciate the meat you consume (or don't) a lot more, plus it makes the strongest case for grassfed beef I've heard yet. A definite recommend for anybody with a cattle-related/agricultural career path.
    • 5/5
      Very informative and readable account of the domestication of cattle through the ages. I really enjoyed it.