Capitalist Pigs
Pigs, Pork, and Power in America
West Virginia University Press · Print & ebook · March 1, 2019
Pigs are everywhere in United States history.
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- Who it’s for
- Trace how pigs and pork shaped American landscapes, economies, and social divisions.
- Themes
- Pigs and American economic history, Food production, consumption, and waste, Regional, racial, and class divisions
- Genres
- Social History, Agriculture & Food Systems, Animal Husbandry
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Pigs are everywhere in United States history. They cleared frontiers and built cities (notably Cincinnati, once known as Porkopolis), served as an early form of welfare, and were at the center of two nineteenth-century “pig wars.” American pork fed the hemisphere; lard literally greased the wheels of capitalism.
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J. L. Anderson has written an ambitious history of pigs and pig products from the Columbian exchange to the present, emphasizing critical stories of production, consumption, and waste in American history. He examines different cultural assumptions about pigs to provide a window into the nation’s regional, racial, and class fault lines, and maps where pigs are (and are not) to reveal a deep history of the American landscape. A contribution to American history, food studies, agricultural history, and animal studies, Capitalist Pigs is an accessible, deeply researched, and often surprising portrait of one of the planet’s most consequential interspecies relationships.
Pigs and American Power
Trace how pigs and pork shaped American landscapes, economies, and social divisions.
Come here for
- Pigs’ roles in frontier clearing, city-building, welfare, and nineteenth-century conflicts
- How pork production, consumption, and waste enter American history
Expect
- A history spanning the Columbian exchange to the present
- Attention to regional, racial, and class fault lines
Where it sits
| Agriculture & Food Systems | 74% |
|---|---|
| Social History | 50% |
| Animal Husbandry | 20% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- U.S. History
- Animal Husbandry
- Authors
- J. L. Anderson
- Publisher
- West Virginia University Press
- Published
- March 1, 2019
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Pigs and American economic history · Food production, consumption, and waste · Regional, racial, and class divisions
- Reading lane
- U.S. History