For thousands of years, pigs have enriched, disgusted and fascinated us. But they have also done something stranger. They've helped define who belongs and who doesn't.
Part culinary history, part journey into religion, politics and identity, Pig explores our long and fraught relationship with the world's most consumed animal. From the wild boars first domesticated 10,000 years ago to modern factory farms and the latest frontiers in pig-to-human organ transplants, Ian Trueger traces how pigs have shaped not only what we eat, but how we think.
Travelling from London's St John restaurant to the experimental labs that gave us Dolly the Sheep, from medieval Spain and the Inquisition to colonial Mexico and the conquistadors, Civil War America, Nazi Germany and beyond, he uncovers the surprising role pork has played in the histories of faith, race, nationhood and belonging. And how it changed the world in the process.
Blending memoir, reportage, history and food writing, Pig is a wildly ambitious and provocative exploration of meat and metaphor. It reveals how one humble animal has become a battleground for some of humanity's biggest questions: who we are, who we fear, and what we owe the creatures we eat.