A wholly wonderful essay!
Harpers Wine & Spirit - Guy Davenport
Far from a humdrum book about cows, this book will open even jaundiced eyes.
Entertaining and informative...readers learn more than they ever imagined wanting to know about cattle, but not more than they should.
With this book in hand we no longer have to search encyclopedias and extract hunks of material on cattle ranching.
The author has written a most interesting factual, well-documented book on cattle history.
This is the first book of its kind and well deserves to be widely read.
Balanced, intelligent, and seasoned with telling anecdotes.
The author has written a most interesting factual, well-documented book on cattle history.
A provocative discussion that is bound to engage readers from outside academic circles.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online
A provocative discussion that is bound to engage readers from outside academic circles.
A wholly wonderful essay!
Harpers Wine & Spirit - Guy Davenport
A wholly wonderful essay!
Entertaining and informative...readers learn more than they ever imagined wanting to know about cattle, but not more than they should.
A historical hodgepodge of things bovid. At the outset, Carlson (A Fever in Salem, 1999, etc.) notes that cattle ranching is today one of the great polarizing issues in world ecology, cattle being both destructive and voracious. Though she recognizes the dangers of cattle grazing in sensitive landscapes, she mostly comes down on the side of the cattle keepers in this wide-angle view of the role of ranching in human societies around the world. That role is of critical importance, she writes, for "obtaining hay and feed, building pens and barns, and learning how to preserve milk and its products has changed us far more than it has changed the bovines. One could argue that they domesticated us." Her swift-moving narrative begins with the cave paintings of western Europe, which depict the aurochs, a wild ancestor of the modern domesticated cow; it moves along to describe attempts in Hitler's Germany to retro-breed the aurochs, long extinct, from the wilder breeds of cattle that roam the earth today, and it considers the ethical questions associated with the modern tendency to treat cattle as food-producing machines rather than things with faces and minds. In between, the author touches on just about every possible oddment and bit of trivia that bears on cows, from political scandals surrounding the use of preservatives in the Spanish-American War to the history of margarine ("a food so sterile that no living matter can exist in it"). Carlson's narrative is easy enough to absorb, although it often reads like an assemblage of index cards, mixing quoted and cribbed material with ill-fitting transitions. The author has relied on only a few printed sources at that, some of them erroneous andoutdated: anthropologists, for instance, are no longer comfortable maintaining that cattle cultures are more egalitarian than, say, fishing societies, and it's a stretch to suggest that women suffer from depression more than men because they eat less red meat. Still, it's a handy gathering of facts and opinions on our ill-used bovine friends.
A wholly wonderful essay! Harper's Magazine
Meticulously researched...marshals her arguments with clarity and persuasive force.
Entertaining and informative...readers learn more than they ever imagined wanting to know about cattle, but not more than they should. Booklist
Cattle were first domesticated by humans thousands of years ago. They are not native to the Americas, however, and did not reach the New World until their introduction by Spanish explorers. The impact of cattle on the history and culture of the world, including the United States, has been considerable. Carlson, whose previous works include a study of the New England witch trials and a book about women missionaries in the American West, covers many aspects of the relationship between cattle and people, from ancient times to the present. She has done an excellent job of extracting information and ideas from books, research journals, and popular magazines and has organized the material here into a lively and coherent whole. Carlson goes well beyond history of the bovines themselves to discuss the U.S. beef and dairy industries and their products, our changing dietary habits, consumer health and food safety, environmental and animal rights issues, and the special historical relationship between women and cattle. An excellent complement to this volume, especially for public libraries, is Sara Rath's entertaining The Complete Cow (Voyageur, 1998); while less detailed and narrower in scope than Carlson's book, it includes many color illustrations plus a lengthy chapter on breeds. Carlson's fine account is recommended for both public and academic libraries. William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Carlson, a writer based in Washington state begins with the earliest records and theories about the domestication of cattle, in Mesopotamia, then traces their arrival and fate in the Americas and explores some modern aspects. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
A historical hodgepodge of things bovid. At the outset, Carlson (A Fever in Salem, 1999, etc.) notes that cattle ranching is today one of the great polarizing issues in world ecology, cattle being both destructive and voracious. Though she recognizes the dangers of cattle grazing in sensitive landscapes, she mostly comes down on the side of the cattle keepers in this wide-angle view of the role of ranching in human societies around the world. That role is of critical importance, she writes, for "obtaining hay and feed, building pens and barns, and learning how to preserve milk and its products has changed us far more than it has changed the bovines. One could argue that they domesticated us." Her swift-moving narrative begins with the cave paintings of western Europe, which depict the aurochs, a wild ancestor of the modern domesticated cow; it moves along to describe attempts in Hitler's Germany to retro-breed the aurochs, long extinct, from the wilder breeds of cattle that roam the earth today, and it considers the ethical questions associated with the modern tendency to treat cattle as food-producing machines rather than things with faces and minds. In between, the author touches on just about every possible oddment and bit of trivia that bears on cows, from political scandals surrounding the use of preservatives in the Spanish-American War to the history of margarine ("a food so sterile that no living matter can exist in it"). Carlson's narrative is easy enough to absorb, although it often reads like an assemblage of index cards, mixing quoted and cribbed material with ill-fitting transitions. The author has relied on only a few printed sources at that, some of them erroneous andoutdated: anthropologists, for instance, are no longer comfortable maintaining that cattle cultures are more egalitarian than, say, fishing societies, and it's a stretch to suggest that women suffer from depression more than men because they eat less red meat. Still, it's a handy gathering of facts and opinions on our ill-used bovine friends.
