Jonathan Safran Foer

Over four weeks in Washington, D.C., Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living. A catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East, and at stake is the meaning of home--and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear.

Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir and his own detective work, "Eating Animals" explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits -- from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth -- and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.