Eating Animals

By: Jonathan Safran Foer

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood - facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf - his casual questioning took on an urgency.

His quest for answers ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.

Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits - from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth - and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting. Marked by Foer's profound moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the vibrant style and creativity that made his previous books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Eating Animals is a celebration and a reckoning, a story about the stories we've told - and the stories we now need to tell.

©2009 Jonathan Safran Foer (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"The everyday horrors of factory farming are evoked so vividly, and the case against the people who run the system presented so convincingly, that anyone who, after reading Foer's book, continues to consume the industry's products must be without a heart, or impervious to reason, or both." (J. M. Coetzee)

"A work of moral philosophy...After reading this book, it's hard to disagree [with Foer]." ( San Francisco Chronicle)

"For a hot young writer to train his sights on a subject as unpalatable as meat production and consumption takes raw nerve. What makes Eating Animals so unusual is vegetarian Foer's empathy for human meat eaters, his willingness to let both factory farmers and food reform activists speak for themselves, and his talent for using humor to sweeten a sour argument." ( O, The Oprah Magazine)

Very eye-opening

This book is incredible. It shows every possible perspective on eating animals and human reasoning as to why.
Vegan or not. Vegetarian or not. Read this one. You won't be sorry.

I haven't eaten an animal since

What made the experience of listening to Eating Animals the most enjoyable?

Food is so wrapped up in culture that it's hard to separate my emotional reactions to matzah ball soup from the logical bits where I don't want to contribute to the meat industrial complex. Since Jonathan Safran Foer is Jewish and specifically touched on the same foods that culturally mean so much to me, it was very easy to relate and finally make the decision to stop eating meat completely.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Eating Animals?

I didn't understand the connection between animal farming and human viruses until reading this book. It's stuck out as one of the most important things I've learned. Also, the book makes a surprisingly strong case for eating dogs.

Excellent!

I want to share this with all the animal consumers I know. Serious content along with a little humor.

Philosophical, thoughtful, and yes, disturbing

As someone with a childhood characterized by food ways very similar to the author's, and as a vegetarian, I knew this was going to hit home. I spent much of my life eating meat and even working with it in a professional environment. I have also read most of Michael Pollan's work.

For several years health reasons forced me to abandon vegetarianism, but even eating as ethically raised meat as possible I couldn't reconcile eating any animal with, well, not eating my cat. I chose this book because of the title, and yeah, right away it launches into a thought experiment about eating dogs. There is definitely a lot more ethical philosophy here than in Pollan's books.

But the book is also more disturbing. Really disturbing. For the same health reasons I was forced to quit my vegetarian diet, I cannot be a vegan and I am going to need to force myself into some serious willful ignorance for that.

amazing

loved the story. great prose. worth reading even if you have read other books on vegetarianism and animal rights

Powerful

This book will really open your eyes and your heart to the plight of food animals. I highly recommend it.

must read

great approach to telling the true story of factory farming and creates awareness for us all.

Thoughtful and intriguing

Foer puts so much thought and thoroughness into the stories and ideas that wind through the book. Although it may seem to some like a book they would rather avoid than face, Eating Animals is less about being a vegetarian and all about making life choices that your morals align with. I learned a lot and especially how to accept others' choices! Highly recommend.

Good book for anyone

Everyone should know where our meat comes from. This is a good book for awareness and potentially inspiring change in some. I’d be curious about the Author’s take on the newly developed “lab cultivated meat” (developed over a decade after this book was written) but solid for the time it was written.

The only downside is there are some very far-reaching points that the book does not need in order to be good. Examples are various rifts about Thanksgiving & “historical great leaders who were vegan”. These things detract from the best points.

Important Read!

The author does a fine job here presenting the information in a well thought out and balanced way. Yes we have heard many of these horror stories about the factory farms and slaughter houses before and yet Jonathan Safran Foer presents all this in a provocative and dare I say friendly tone. This book actually caused me not only to think more about options but motivated me to make changes in the ways in which our household eats meat.
At first listening to thiese atrocities I felt powerless because we are meat lovers. We are not going to choose to become vegetarian yet I can no longer buy these factory farmed animal products.
Listening to this book has reminded me to be a better consumer. If we are going to eat meat we better be prepared to pay more for locally grown meats that come from small farms where the animals are treated kindly and in a humane fashion. I now am going to find out where the local slaughter houses are and be sure that any meats we consume are slaughtered in a humane way. So although this book was not fun or at all enjoyable I am glad I had a listen and I truly thank this author for reminding us to do the right thing and support our local family farms and encourage these farms to treat their stock with dignity and decency. This book was a difficult yet interesting listen, well worth the credit.