Reviews with content warning for Gore - Se niente importa: Perché mangiamo gli animali?

This book was hard to read: captivating, real, and a reminder that we need communal spaces to be curious and prosses things with other people. Foer does a fantastic job of simply presenting information without attacking anyone. He just wants to share the information he has gathered on the journey of writing this book.
And we desperately need information. How can we care for a planet when we know nothing about how systemically we are treating it? Food is wrapped up in culture, history, and identify. How do you unpack all that food can mean to people?
I genuinely loved this book. I never felt like Foer was preaching to me or angry with me. But he was asking questions I didn't yet have the knowledge to ask but desperately needed the answers to. He discusses the lives of animals (obviously) but he also takes a look at the people surrounding the industry. We get letters from a factory farmer, a small turkey farmer, a vegetarian cattle rancher, a vegan slaughterhouse builder, and many others. The more voices we hear, the clearer the picture will become.
We need to hear stories. We need to listen without presumption and hear how those big life questions and choices impact those people.
I do wish he would have mentioned that other cultures and those of other beliefs have difference access and ideas to eating animals, but he did acknowledge that the scope of his research would be in America.
Over all, a much needed book that encourages us to ask questions about the world around us and act on the answers we find.

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shelby1994's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

4.0

Reading this made me become a vegetarian. That's it. That's the review.
(There is not enough space in the world for the number of content warnings that should be applied to this book; safe to say, don't make the mistake I did and try to read this while eating your lunch. You will throw up and have to leave work early to ponder the value and morality of human existence.)

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mckeelyshannon's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

One of my favorite lines in the book is “If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.”

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vicanarc_'s review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

This is a good book if you are already vegetarian because it will give you facts to despute people's arguments against vegetarianism.
This book is in no way pleasent to read, but it tells the truth, and you can't deny it.
It's not pretty, but we have to come to term with the effects we have as white western capitalistic people when we eat animal products, and especially meat.

The author is in no way condesceding or "pushy" in his views, he is not the stereotypical "annoying" vegeterian. As a newbie vegan, i actually found him way too soft, but i understand that's the best way to present data to people who may not be already familiar with the topic

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krsweet's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

2.5

The book was an interesting look into animal welfare in farming. I am glad for the descriptions of the practices, but some of the inclusions (such as information from PETA, which has been known to falsify claims) detract from the overall message. Some passages struck me as particularly dated as well, with language around human suffering throw in for shock value, especially mentions of sexual abuse and slavery. I wouldn't recommend this book to a friend, for those reasons, but I did gain a lot from it. I don't think I can take the word of the author as fact, but I do think his argument was persuasive.

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