Written with the verve readers know from his novels, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer's first nonfiction book -- Eating Animals -- grew out of his need to justify dietary decisions to his children.
A vegetarian and sometime vegan, Foer carefully examines the stories we tell ourselves about what we eat, considering notions of comfort, tradition, and culture. He blends his memories of the roles food played in his childhood with literary representations of meals; reviews various philosophies of food; and conducts his own investigations into factory farms.
Bio
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is a novelist and short story writer whose works have appeared in the Paris Review, Conjunctions, The New York Times and The New Yorker.
He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel, Everything Is Illuminated. In spring 2008, Foer taught as visiting professor of fiction at Yale University. He is currently a professor in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University.
System of modern animal farming designed to yield the most meat, milk, and eggs in the least amount of time and space possible. The term, descriptive of standard farming practice in the U.S., is frequently used by animal-rights activists, who maintain that animal-protection measures routinely ignore farm animals. Animals are often fed growth hormones, sprayed with pesticides, and fed antibiotics to mitigate the problems of infestation and disease that are exacerbated by crowded living conditions. Chickens spend their lives crowded into small cages, often so tightly that they cannot turn around; the cages are stacked in high batteries, and the length of day and night are artificially controlled to maximize egg laying. Veal calves are virtually immobilized in narrow stalls for their entire lives. These and numerous other practices have long been decried by critics.