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I've recently become a Jonathan Safran Foer addict. His writing is exhilarating, personal and touching. Although I had seen the film of Everything Is Illuminated, I think he really came to my attention in NY Mag by bagging conceited dipshit Anthony Bourdain. His latest book, Eating Animals is one of the most incredible books I've read. As a vegan, it's always hard not to be a crank spouting facts at meat eating friends, which usually is only helpful in starting religious wars. But when one of our times' great story-tellers approaches the difficult subject of modern day animal agriculture from anew with an open and honest investigation, the result is a much more enjoyable read, yet an astonishingly important and comprehensive work. A must read for everyone.

Foer opens the book with 'Storytelling' - a binding and familiar tale about his Grandmother's cooking. The way we eat is such a large part of our culture, our family traditions and habits, our identity, that it overshadows what may normally be easy, clear-cut decisions. After years of coyly courting vegetarianism, Foer is jolted by the vastly more significant responsibility of making decisions for his soon-to-arrive son.

So rather than cranky veganism or environmentatlism is instead the story of Foer's conflicted but philosophical journey. A journey which sees him sneaking into a factory farm, visiting family farmers striving to provide "ethically raised" meat products, including a vegetarian rancher (not to mention the vegan slaughterhouse architect), talking with the employees of factory farming operations and slaughterhouses, and not least of all distilling the ocean of data and statistics to provide us with frightening glimpses of the scale of it all.

Given the gravity of the topic, most reviews easily forget to mention the brilliance of Foer's penmanship. The book resonates so deeply and is so successful because of Foer's storytelling ability, relating us all through our common experiences with food and tradition, and the decisions, queries and self-doubt we've all encountered. Foer is not here to beat you up, instead he wants to discuss the difficult topics, get past the convenient excuses, look into our traditions, look at the discrepancies between what we believe and what's real, our ethics and our actions, what is visible and what is hidden.

Eating Animals is one the most utterly important conversations we need to have right now, you need to take part. Read this book.

A useful video interview with Foer is here on Amazon.

Added 31-Dec-2009

• JSF on The Ellen Degeneres Show
• http://eatinganimals.com/