Immerse In Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard To Think Straight About Animals Compiled By Hal Herzog Accessible As Hardcover

torn between one star and two, I would have given it a two just because the author seems to be making steps similar to those of Michael Pollan"humane" meat, eating less meat, etc, And although the author seems to be conflicted with his own choices, I feel that these steps could make a difference if enough people adopted them, Would I much rather the guy be vegan Well, duh, but that's not the world we live in, If this book manages to convince someone to even CONSIDER the moral implications of food, then that's progress, right

However, I have to say he destroyed his credibility with me rather early on: at the point in which he states that Hitler was a vegetarian, to be exact.
He neglects to mention documentation from various sourcesone being Hitler's chefthat refutes this unless you're one of those special people who think that vegetarians eat sausage, game, grouse, and caviar.
He only cited one source to support it I'm surprised it wasn't vegetariansareevil, com.

He would also like to link vegetarianism with anorexia I WISH! Wouldn't that solve all my problems and bulemia, How this has ANYTHING to do with the relationship between animals and people is beyond my understandingand I'm guessing it's beyond the author's as well, Does liking animals put you at a higher risk for an eating disorder! Instead of discussing his field of "expertise," his writing derails into an attempt to discredit vegetarianism as "dangerous.
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This is a joke in bad taste deal with it,

For someone who makes a career out of studying the relationships between animals and people, he seems as misguided and confused as anyone else, It's sad to see someone justify cockfighting by saying it's more humane than the way chickens are treated on factory farms,

"Karen Davis tells me that no chicken in the world would want to live the life of a fighting rooster, I'll laythat she is wrong, " P

I'm sure some people would rather be stabbed to death than be placed in a concentration camp for their entire lives, but that doesn't justify either action.
And no, I'm not equating human suffering and animal suffering these are just analogous situations,

"The war on cockfighting is about cruelty, but the subtext is social class, The eighteenth century movement against blood sports was directed toward activities that appealed to the proletariat, such as bullbaiting and cockfighting, rather than the cruel leisure pursuits of the landed gentry, such as foxhunting.
It's no different today. Cockfighters come from easy groups to pick onHispanics and rural, workingclass whites, Animal activists, on the other hand, tend to be urban, middleclass, and welleducated, They dismiss rooster fighters as a motley group of shitkickers and illegal aliens, "

What a fucking generalization, Last time I checked every animal activist I know is against blood sport of ANY kind and probably even more resentful of those undertaken by the wealthy ahem, trophy hunting.
Perhaps it seems otherwise simply because the wealthy have lobbyists to protect their interests and so animal activists gain a lot less ground, I would also like to point out just for the fuck of it that I come from a rural family, I'm also currently vegan while makingan hour at a parttime job where I work less than ten hours a week, I don't pay rent, but I do manage to buy my groceries with money left for gas and general waste concerts, dining out, the occasional shiny object, etc, and so it irks me a bit when people dismiss animal concerns as something left to people who can "afford" to care, As I stated before, bravo to the author for buying meat from freerange, organic, grassfed farms instead of factory farms!, but honestly, touting this option as a solution for everyone comes across as the ignorance of the wealthy and "welleducated" middle to upper class.
Thanks to the author's picture on the back cover I can now envision him giving Michael Pollan a welldeserved reacharound,

He mentions how people frame questions and situations to mislead and yet he's guilty of exactly this, His foray into animal research mentions nothing of the alternatives to animal research, You're either for torturing animals to save lives or againstnever mind that we may just be beyond the necessity of such experiments, "Yes, I would swap a million mice to wipe out Dengue, In a heartbeat. But a million mice for a treatment for baldness Or erectile dysfunction Hmm, . . probably not. " While that's a lovely sentiment, why is someone's desire for a hard cock any less important than someone else's desire to consume animal flesh for the sake of TASTE Well, if a guy has less cholesterol blocking his arteries, he might have less trouble getting blood flow down there, but that's not the point.
The point is: why draw the "moral high ground" between the desire for vanity or sex and the desire for taste

At the end of the book, Mr.
Herzog is content with not particularly understanding "why it's so hard to think straight about animals, " He doesn't seem like a bad guy, just very confused for someone who dedicated an entire book to a question he doesn't answer, I'd suggest he read sitelinkWhy We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows by Melanie Joy, . . since she actually fulfills the promise of explaining the contradictions we feel towards animals,

Let me reiterate a third time: I WOULD RATHER SOMEONE EAT MEAT FROM A FREERANGE, ORGANIC FARM THAN FROM A FACTORY FARM, I WOULD RATHER SOMEONE REDUCE MEAT INTAKE RATHER THAN THROW THEIR HANDS UP IN DEFEAT AND DO NOTHING AT ALL, but what I don't see the need for is another book, echoing Michael Pollan's sentiments without adding any more clarity or understanding to the issue.
I take a chapter titled "Why Is Meat So Tasty" as seriously as I do tshirts that proclaim "If we're not supposed to eat animals, then why are they made of meat" At least other books that lean towards animalwelfare

reforms instead of animalrights lend the issue the gravity it deserves.
The subtitle of this book should not be "Why it's so hard to think straight about animals," which leads you to expect some kind of answer to the question.
"It's so hard to think straight about animals" is more like it,

For me, as someone who's written about animals myself and has a fair amount of familiarity with the research literature, this book was somewhat disappointing, There's not that much in this book that I didn't already know, The most interesting part was about cockfighting, which is both the area that I knew least about and one that the author has done his own primary research on most of the rest of the book relates the work of others.


On the other hand, the fact that this book is so similar to what you'd get from a brain dump of what I know about animals isn't necessarily a bad thing.
After all, the reason I learned all that stuff is because it is really interesting, If you don't know it, this book could be quite enlightening, at least in exposing you to stuff that you didn't know people even did research about,

As far as the publisher's description, I think you'll be disappointed if you expect the irreverent humor of Mary Roach, but relieved that you don't have to put up with anything much like the overexposed intellect of Malcolm Gladwell.
But never mind that publicity nonsense, The mix of research reports and personal anecdotes doesn't always work for me and the writing style was awkward at times for example, why can't he make a consistent decision about whether to refer to researchers he cites by first or last names but for me, he was a guide to this material that I felt extremely comfortable with.
It was nice for a change to read a book about animals where the author is perfectly rational about the fact that basically nothing in our attitudes towards animals makes a damn bit of sense.
I started reading this book in order to participate in the Read Smart book discussion series organized by NCSU Libraries and Wake County Public Libraries, I was so unimpressed by this book that I almost gave up on it, After a day or two, I was so traumatized by my not finishing a book that I started, that I went back to reading it,

This time, I was pleasantly surprised by how intelligent the book sounded, I think the author did a good job addressing the very confusing and somewhat hypocritical relationship that we have with animals in our daily lives, He touches on pets and pests, meat and other animal products, hunting and other recreational killing, research animals and even cockfighting, In writing the book he has talked to people from all walks of life those in academia, those involved with animal rights organizations, vegans and even some people who grow gamecocks.


While the book starts of a tad slow, he builds up momentum and argues convincingly about his case that our relationship with animals will always be confusing, draped in various shades of gray.
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