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)

Powerful...this book will move you.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It exposes the factory farm system of meat supply in our country. If you are concerned about your personal health, the environment, and what you eat on a daily basis this book has things you need to know. Foer intersperses these accounts with personal and engaging stories about his personal life so it is not a total gloom and doom experience. I hope his book will have an equal or greater effect than Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did a century ago. It is an interesting and worthwhile read.

If you eat food, you MUST read this book

It is time for human beings to take responsibility for the things they put in their bodies. No more can we continue to buy these products and say "Well, I didn't know." the information is out there, we are all adults and have a responsibly to educate ourselves. By continuing to support these practices we are condoning it and are there for responsible. Eating animals is a good place to start because it is a very balanced picture of what is wrong with our farming system. There are parts that are hard to hear for sure. But we owe it to our fellow creatures on this earth to treat them with fairness. We owe it to ourselves to know what we are putting in our mouths and feeding to our children. Every adult on this earth should read this book. Seriously.

Narrator needs to swallow

the narrator sounded like he had a mouthful of saliva the while time, making it hard to listen to at times

If you eat meat, read this book.

Foer is a compelling story teller who fills this book with experiences from people in the animals-raised-to-become-meat industry. He covers this from a variety of angles, from the family producer to the factory scale. The book was difficult for me to listen to, and it took me a while to finish. However, I highly recommend it. It took me a while because the content was heartbreaking to hear. I was once a vegetarian and had fallen into the convenience of being an omnivore. After reading this book I am a vegetarian again.

Strong case for becoming a vegetarian.

Great overall story and it really opened my eyes to the reality of meat eating and factory farming. i was about to visualize and understand the pain each animal must've went through. i cant look at meat the same way.

Damn, we are poisioned!

Good book. Its too bad that we cant trust our businesses to look out for us. You gotta be smart to stay alive these days.

Must read for meat eaters

After listening to this I will still eat animals but I will not eat factory farmed animals. If you want to know why then read the book.

Eye opener

This is a must read for anyone who is questioning eating animals. I have been on a vegetarian diet for over one year and I am now much more committed to trying a vegan diet going forward. The thought that everything we consider meat these days is a genetic mutant that was created in a lab specifically for nourishment completely turned me away from ever wanting meat in my diet again. The author does a great job uncovering what actually goes on in the meat production industry while the general meat eating population purposely ignores where their food comes from. If you're looking for a book to help re-energize your new path on a plant-based diet or just looking for some information regarding the health and well-being of the animals that you currently eat this is a great place to start.

I saw rial education for those unaware of the truth behind factory farming

The cruelty associated with eating animals seems to know no bounds. This book is a great education in the truth behind the meat in your plate and how it suffered miserably for a few second of pleasure in your mouth. Go vegan…for so many good reasons listed in this book.

If Nothing Matters, There's Nothing to Save

I'm going to have to chew on this book for a bit. I'm not sure an audible review posted the day after listening/reading will fully capture what I plan on doing after 'Eating Animals'. I might be about ready to go veg, but there is something annoying enough about JSF (I've always been a little annoyed by JSF) that almost wants to keep me eating meat just to piss him off. Nah, that really isn't true, but I do wish it was.

The book isn't as well-written as I would have liked. It gave me what was important, but just not in the portions or the way I would have preferred. The book's narrative shifts were a little confusing. At times, I didn't know if JSF was trying to produce an academic discourse or a philosophical screed. In total, I guess it worked, but JUST barely. For me, 'Eating Meat' was held together more by the power of the message than the way that JSF cooked the message.

To be fair, I did really like Foer's ideas/themes of creating new stories of food and his idea that animals are often recepticals of our forgetting. I thought that was the strongest piece of his whole book.

Anyway, off to bed. I'll dream of factory slaughtered turkeys and hogs and wake tomorrow ready to think more about this book, the Animals I eat, the resources I waste, and what I plan on doing for the rest of my life in relation to the meat I eat. We will see what tomorrow brings.