Springer Mountain

July 16, 2021

This collection of essays, spanning investigative reporting, travelogue, and personal anecdote, takes a journalistic view of meat, from farm to plate. Using his extensive research and firsthand visits to farms and slaughterhouses, Williams (a former restaurant critic and finalist for the James Beard Foundation MFK Fisher Award) creates a narrative of the culture, history, and societal views of meat, from factory farming to game hunting. His research included various hands-on experiences, from working on a chicken farm and at a slaughterhouse, to learning how to hunt his own game. He also travels to Alaska to learn about whaling and talks to Alaskan Natives about its importance. Along the way, he offers personal insight from his years as a restaurant critic and food writer. In contemplating how and why people kill animals, Williams does not aim to horrify his readers; rather, he asks us to consider the history of the food we consume. VERDICT Similar to Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma, this engaging narrative will catch readers' attention and lead them to take a deeper look at the where, how, and why behind the food they consume. In addition to foodies and historians, this book will appeal to readers wanting a better understanding of cultures and societies surrounding food.--Dawn Lowe-Wincentsen, Oregon Inst. of Technology, Portland

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2021
Scattered reflections on the intersections of humans, animals, and food. This book is a prime example of an author not being precisely sure where he is going or why. The first half is a confounding, fragmented ramble, caroming in time, place, and subject matter from vegetarian philosophies of the 19th century to slaughtering chickens to arcane asides from around the globe. Presumably, this is all in aid of answering Williams' fundamental questions: Why do we kill animals, why do we eat them, and how does it define us? Despite years of research, his only answer won't be news to many readers: "We are predators, killers. We are good at it. We like it." One would expect something more substantial and cohesive from a writer such as Williams, a former restaurant critic who has spent years contemplating food and eating, but much of the narrative suffers from self-indulgence. However, around the midway point, Williams jettisons his muddled meditations and employs a straightforward narrative that reveals his capabilities as a writer. The author's vivid observations on the town of Barrow, Alaska, its people, and subsistence whaling are the highlight of the book. Along the way, he offers some telling insights on why we collect and display things: in part to make the world knowable, somehow less daunting in its immensity and diversity, in the way "maps, museums, books and farms try to do." But Williams also knows the world "isn't reducible in that way; it can't be understood in a glance." Near the end of the text, the author realizes his own intent, admitting that so many stories about the world are often about the person telling them. "The longer my inquiry went on, the less clear my intentions became," he writes. One might say the same thing of the book. Meandering stylistics undermine episodes of solid reportage.

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