Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef

by Betty Fussell
Harcourt, 402 pp., $26

It’s hard to live in Texas without an inkling of the role cattle have played in history and economics. And in the early 21st century, our collective consciousness has been raised regarding modern industrialized beef, its ethical and environmental implications, and its relationship to health and nutrition. However, it’s a big task to make sense of it all – how it was, how it is, where it’s going, and why.

As she did with her prize-winning The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell competently wraps her arms around the daunting topic of American beef. With meticulous research, she takes us from the 1598 arrival in Texas of the first breeding herd to the post-World War II relationship of corn, petroleum, and cattle to the current movement toward humanely raised grass-fed livestock. Traveling the country, visiting ranches and slaughterhouses, Fussell explains the intertwined cattle legacies from Spain and Britain and deconstructs the American romances of the cowboy and the machine that together spawned today’s beef culture.

Sunday, 3:30-4:30pm, Cooking Tent

This article appears in John McCain.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

MM Pack is a food writer/historian and private chef who divides her time between Austin and San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Austin Chronicle and Edible Austin, she’s been published in Gastronomica, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, Nation’s Restaurant News, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, The Dictionary of Culinary Biography, and Southern Foodways Alliance’s Cornbread Nation 1.