Saturday, March 25, 2006

Gastronomica review of A Cow's Life

In the new Winter 2006 issue of Gastronomica, Yale's Ellen Fried reviews A Cow's Life by M. R. Montgomery.
Montgomery dishes out a bovine stew heady with chunks of history and liberally seasoned with dashes of etymology. From Stone Age caves to cattle bones ringing the pyramids, from Chinese pictographs meaning “supercow” to the cattle wealth origins of “pecuniary,” and from Spain’s corridas to Scotland’s grassy moors, the point is driven home that without cows life could not have evolved as we know it.
Fried is a nationally recognized expert on deceptive food advertising, especially advertising to children, and has the high honor of a biography on the food industry's secretive attack-dog website. (That biography, incidentally, has wonderful reasonable quotations from her.)