Eating+Animals+-+Foer

Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The latest from novelist Foer is a surprising but characteristically brilliant memoir-investigation, boasting an exhaustively-argued account of one man-child's decade-long struggle with vegetarianism. On the eve of becoming a father, Foer takes all the arguments for and against vegetarianism a neurotic step beyond and, to decide how to feed his coming baby, investigates everything from the intelligence level of our most popular meat providers-cattle, pigs, and poultry-to the specious self-justifications (his own included) for eating some meat products and not others. Foer offers a lighthearted counterpoint to his investigation in doting portraits of his loving grandmother, and her meat-and-potatoes comfort food, leaving him to wrestle with the comparative weight of food's socio-cultural significance and its economic-moral-political meaning. Without pulling any punches-factory farming is given the full expose treatment-Foer combines an array of facts, astutely-written anecdotes, and his furious, inward-spinning energy to make a personal, highly entertaining take on an increasingly visible (and book-selling) moral question; call it, perhaps, An Omnivore's Dilemma.

Review
"//Eating Animals// carefully, deliberately, takes you through every relevant dimension of factory farming...One sees it from the inside, the outside, the moral high ground, the dithering consumer level, through Foer's family stories, from slaughterhouse workers, animal behaviorists, even from defenders of the system... Foer's aim is not to make your choice, but to inform it. He has done us all a great service, and we, and the animals, owe him our thanks." (**//The Huffington Post//** //**Dr. Andrew Weil**// )

"A work of moral philosophy...After reading this book, it's hard to disagree [with Foer]." (**//San Francisco Chronicle//** //**Geoff Nicholson**// )

"Foer's case for ethical vegetarianism is wholly compelling...A blend of solid-and discomforting-reportage with fierce advocacy that will make committed carnivores squeal." (**//Kirkus Reviews//** )

"Some of our finest journalists (Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser) and animal rights activists (Peter Singer, Temple Grandin)-not to mention Gandhi, Jesus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and Immanuel Kant (and so many others)-have hurled themselves against the question of eating meat and the moral issues inherent in killing animals for food. Foer, 32, in this, his first work of nonfiction, intrepidly joins their ranks...It is the kind of wisdom that, in all its humanity and clarity, deserves a place at the table with our greatest philosophers." (**//Los Angeles Times//** //**Susan Salter Reynolds**// )

"Stirring....compelling, earnest...Foer brings an invigorating moral clarity to the topic." (**//Entertainment Weekly//** )

"The everyday horrors of factory farming are evoked so vividly, and the case against the people who run the system presented so convincingly, that anyone who, after reading Foer's book, continues to consume the industry's products must be without a heart, or impervious to reason, or both." (//**J.M. Coetzee**// )

"The latest from novelist Foer is a surprising but characteristically brilliant memoir-investigation, boasting an exhaustively-argued account of one man-child's decade-long struggle with vegetarianism...Without pulling any punches-factory farming is given the full expose treatment-Foer combines an array of facts, astutely-written anecdotes, and his furious, inward-spinning energy to make a personal, highly entertaining take on an increasingly visible...moral question; call it, perhaps, //An Omnivore's Dilemma//." (**//Publishers Weekly//** )

"[//Eating Animals//] is a postmodern version of Peter Singer's 1975 manifesto //Animal Liberation//...Foer is the latest in a long line of distinguished literary vegetarians." (**//New York Times Book Review//** //**Jennifer Schuessler**// )

"[//Eating Animals//] is extraordinarily thoughtful and intelligent, and reads more like philosophy than journalism." (**//St. Louis Post-Dispatch//** //**Holly Silva**// )

PRAISE FOR //EATING ANIMALS//:

"For a hot young writer to train his sights on a subject as unpalatable as meat production and consumption takes raw nerve. What makes //Eating Animals// so unusual is vegetarian Foer's empathy for human meat eaters, his willingness to let both factory farmers and food reform activists speak for themselves, and his talent for using humor to sweeten a sour argument." (**//O//, //The Oprah Magazine//** )

Author Bio

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestseller Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. Foer was one of Rolling Stone's “People of the Year” and Esquire's “Best and Brightest.” Foreign rights to his new novel have already been sold in ten countries. The film of Everything Is Illuminated, directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood, will be released in August 2005. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been optioned for film by Scott Rudin Productions in conjunction with Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures. Foer lives in Brooklyn, New York.