Hog ties : pigs, manure, and mortality in American culture / Richard P. Horwitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horwitz, Richard P., 1949-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swine--United States.

Swine.

United States.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xiv, 306 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

Advance Uncorrected Proof.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Summary:

From Charlotte's Web to Porky Pig and Babe, Americans are obsessed with pigs. In Hog Ties, Richard Horwitz looks at this obsession, its relation to American culture and the way in which themes of life and death are played out in the care, feeding, slaughtering and eating of pigs. Horwitz grew up in a rural, Jewish household in the Northeast and worked part-time as a farmhand on a large Iowa pig farm. As much a memoir of rural life as it is a work of cultural commentary, Hog Ties looks at the current business of pig farming, its roots in the family farms of the Midwest, and its future in the large conglomerates that take over small farms and increasingly separate the farm families from their land. In the lives and trials of pigs and their caretakers, Horwitz sees a mirror image of our own lives, our fight against myriad diseases, our ultimate death, our possible redemption, and therein discovers the Tao of pig. Hog Ties is a book that readers will ponder long after the last page has been turned.

Contents:

pt. 1. Caring for hogs and the meaning of life

pt. 2. Stepping into it

pt. 3. Stepping out of it

pt. 4. Stepping back : hog memories, fair and foul

pt. 5. Disease, body and soul

pt. 6. Say it with swine.

Notes:

Book description on first leaf.

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has letter from publicist laid in at front and publicist's business card attached to front inside cover.

OCLC:

904347237