"No one writes better about the byways of American food and American culture than Betty Fussell." — Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food
"Betty Fussell uses her skills as a journalist and cultural historian to examine how and why steak became so central to American diets. From cowboys in the West to celebrity chefs in the East, she reveals the human side of beef production, marketing, and consumption."
— Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat
When we bite into a charred crust and a pink interior, Fussell finds that we bite into contradictions that have branded our national identity from the start. We taste the colliding fantasies of British pastoralists and Spanish ranchers that erupted in land wars between a wet-weather East and a desert West. We savor the ideas of wilderness and progress that clashed when we replaced buffalo with cattle, and then cowboys with industrial machines. We take in the contradictions of rugged individualism and the corporate technology that we use to breed, feed, slaughter, package, and distribute the animals we turn into meat. And we participate – as do the cattlemen and chefs, feedlot operators and rodeo stars, boot makers and scientists Betty Fussell talks with – in the mythology that inspires cowboys to become technocrats and presidents to play cowboy.
Raising Steaks is a celebration of, and an elegy for, a uniquely American Dream.
Betty Fussell is the author of ten previous books, including The Story of Corn and My Kitchen Wars. A contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, Saveur, Food & Wine, Gastronomica, and other publications, she has also lectured widely on food history. Western born, she lives in New York City.
