B&N Reads, Guest Post, Nonfiction, Travel

A Happy Accident: A Guest Post by Jamie Loftus

By Jamie Loftus / May 27, 2025 at 1:27 am

Of all the unconventional ways to critique capitalism, using the hot dog as a vessel might be the most unique. Evocative and incisive, insightful and irreverent, Raw Dog is wholly its own thing. Read on for an exclusive essay from Jamie Loftus on writing Raw Dog.

Paperback $19.99

Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs

By Jamie Loftus

In Stock Online

Paperback $19.99

Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique—comedian Jamie Loftus’s debut, Raw Dog, will take you on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2021, and reveal what the creation, culture, and class influence of hot dogs says about America now.

The only feeling I love more than learning that the book about an extremely specific topic I’m interested in exists is learning that it doesn’t. What do you mean, no one’s written a book about loving hot dogs that doesn’t shy away from how horrific the processes that put them in the bun are? Does that mean I need to drop everything for a year and make that book exist myself? Fine, I’ll do it.

Raw Dog was a happy accident during an unprecedented time – I didn’t consider myself worthy of writing a book, and only realized I could by actually doing it. In the years leading up to the pandemic lockdown, I made ends meet through a combination of TV writing, cursed internet content, standup tours, and reported short-form podcast series, with no shortage of side hustles in between. Raw Dog was the culmination of all these things that was only made possible by my editor Ali’s belief that I had the skills I needed, it was just calibrating them for the task at hand.

I’m very lucky to say I got to write the book that didn’t exist yet, one that sought to explore how the hot dog became an American icon with equal parts affection and interrogation, all while taking a road trip with an uninvited boyfriend in the early days of eased lockdown. Symbols taken for granted that eliciting a bizarrely intense response are my passion, and the hot dog is a big whale to harpoon – but long after the road trip the book follows ended, I got to continue to explore the issues I’m passionate about. Hot dogs seem innocuous, sure, but they’re just as entrenched in issues of labor, of race, of gender and justice as any other.

Now that the paperback edition is out two years after Raw Dog’s first publication, it’s been… a lot. The issues around labor and meatpacking that bled over from the first Trump administration are now exacerbated in the second, with working conditions in meatpacking facilities less safe than ever while meat is pushed on the public at alarming rates. But there is hope! At the time I wrote the first edition of Raw Dog, reasonably edibleplant-based alternatives to hot dogs were hard to find outside of a well-roasted carrot. In the last two years, that’s changed – vegan dogs sit alongside unethically produced meat at affordable prices.

There’s hope. There’s hot dogs, there’s hope, and there’s my hot dog hope that Raw Dog will inspire you to take a closer look at a symbol, an idea, or a beloved street food you take for granted and start asking questions.

But honestly? The best part about writing a book about hot dogs is that once you do, every hot dog you eat until you die is a business expense. That’s not useful advice for you, but it’s worked out tremendously well for me.