Meat: A Love Story (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: primal diet, antler envy, prime meat market, Maple Leaf, North America, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Meat is the new black, declares Toronto-based journalist Bourette at the onset. She became a vegetarian after having once worked four days at a meatpacking plant for less than $10 an hour before disclosing herself as a reporter. Vegetarianism lasted less than six weeks before she resolved to find meat she felt good about eating. Her quest comprises the narrative's bulk and takes her from an old-fashioned Greenwich Village meat-shop butchering tutorial to the Inupiat whale blubber harvest. In Alaska, Bourette fathoms the relationship between meat and its provenance, and teases that out in subsequent chapters describing such topics as the workings of a Texas cattle ranch and moose-hunting season in Newfoundland. Throughout, she covers the broader subject of meat, including the history of American beef and its subcultures and controversies such as the impact of agribusiness and climate change on ranchers. The narrative moves swiftly and broadly at the gain of historical and cultural perspective but at the expense of well-thought-out conclusions and scene development so that the actual experience of eating meat often gets the shortest shrift. (May)
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From Booklist

Canadian journalist Bourette goes briefly undercover in a pork-processing facility where she learns more than she wants to about how an industrial pig slaughterhouse really does function and what it takes to get her mom’s pork roast from farm to table. To further her understanding of people’s relationship to meat eating, Bourette travels to an Inupiat settlement in Canada’s Arctic region to witness whale hunting. Her affection for the hardy people she encounters doesn’t overcome her aversion to blubber, which she finds completely indigestible. Bourette explores an environmentally aware ranch that prides itself on organic and humane cattle raising. At Newfoundland’s Tuckamore Lodge, she encounters a surprisingly socially diverse group of dedicated hunters who hunt both for sport and for sustenance. At the periphery of the carnivorous spectrum, she meets up with advocates of the “Primal Diet,” who find raw meat just the ticket. --Mark Knoblauch

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399154868
• ISBN-13: 978-0399154867
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #229,323 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #9 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry > Meat
  #94 in	Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Meat, Poultry & Seafood > Meats

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mouth-watering but thought-provoking, June 4, 2008

By	Thomas Andrew Bradley (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews

I enjoyed this immensely. Like the author, I tried a vegetarian diet as an act of conscience several times but I have to admit I never felt worse ... even when I tried to follow the guidelines. Bourette's Meat puts meat-eating in North America in a cultural and historical context. It's not a screed against meat-eating though it's critical of the corporate meat industry. (The author's experiences working in a meat plant might have you skipping pork loins for some time.) Bourette's Meat: A Love Story is a call out to meat-eaters--a challenge not to give up meat but rather to eat better meats, to understand and value the origins of the meat on their tables. Bourette goes from cattle ranch and the Rockefellers' organic farm to the shop of a Manhattan celeb-butcher and a trendy butchering class. The raw-meat-eating cult has to be read to be believed--in Aspen of all places. The author went to end of the earth--on an ice floe for a whale hunt in Barrow, Alaska is just about the end of the earth--to find out why we eat meat, what meat means to us, and how we should eat it. It's pretty filling. It will stick to your ribs and stick in your mind long after you read it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good first step in having one's meat and being proud of it too..., July 2, 2008

By	William E. Adams (Midland, Texas USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have dear friends (in Kansas City, of all places...home of great steaks) who have been vegetarians for 30 years, partly due to the horrors of how our society turns animals into table fare. Susan, the author of this unusual memoir, served a week in a pork plant (I have another friend who works in one of those, but who still eats meat) and became a vegetarian for a month, but couldn't make it stick. I did vegetarian during a five-day visit to my KC friends, but before I even got to my home from the airport I was eating a burger. So I identified with Susan...a lot. This book tries to describe two things: why most humans crave and indulge in meat, despite health risks, and how we might keep it on our menus and yet not enrich the corporations who treat livestock and fowl inhumanely. The answer is obvious: eat meat less often, but indulge in higher quality when we do, purchasing our entrees from those who raise the animals on a small scale, in pastures, and who feed them without filling them full of fattening chemicals. A fuller explanation of how this can be done by those of us not living in large cities or on large budgets must wait until someone writes a sequel to "Meat...a love story" but Susan's work is the necessary background to that effort. If you want to continue eating beef, pork and chicken dishes, but desire to feel less guilty about it, this is the book for you.

1.0 out of 5 stars great premise and dust cover, August 28, 2009

By	jason (florida USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meat: A Love Story (Hardcover)

I received this book as a gift and was kind of excited after reading the dust cover. Unfortunately that excitement didn't last long into the reading. Instead of being this magical journey of meat it was more like 10 short stories loosely woven together. I think this would have been a great book with the right author. Susan traveled to some fabulous places with nothing but a closed mind towards the food she was going to investigate. Not only the disdain that she brought along but the inability to do anything but sit on the sidelines and observe. She comes across as one of those feel good types that has never done an honest days work but feels a bond and sympathy for the working stiff. Even though she is Canadian she travels with the "ugly American" persona. Traveling to the whale hunt she is totally mortified to even try most of the food offered and even has to spit out the one SMALL piece muktuk that she tried. It came as no surprise that her favorite meals were from a high end steakhouse and an boutique farm outside of New York. To me this book came about as a way to excuse her awful meat eating life to her vegan partner and to give her some street cred among her highbrow friends. If you have the money and want to have an excuse to eat $25/lb organic grass fed steaks in front of your vegan elitist friends this is probably a book for you. However if you love meat and all that it can be taste-wise spend your money on a charcuterie book where the author loves the meat not the fuzzy cow.