| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 33.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 33.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Cattle: An Informal Social History. By Lauri Winn Carlson. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001. xi + 321 pp. Notes, index. $27.50.)

     Lauri Winn Carlson loves cows. Beginning her book with a country-fair epiphany about their utter beauty, she reveals the deep appreciation that inspired her to track the story of cattle. From the prehistoric domestication of aurochs to bovine symbolism, Carlson's book progresses in topical, loosely-chronological chapters, ultimately homing in on the relationship between people and cattle in Europe and the U. S. 1

     Western historians will be interested in Carlson's analysis of cow-tending styles. Following David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (New York, 1989), she contends that the free-range grazing style that migrated from the northern British Isles to the American South and then westward with the descendants of Scotch Highlander immigrants influenced cattle grazing in the American West as much as the vaquero culture typically credited as the cowboy fount. 2

     In addition to expected chapters on barbed wire, cattle drives, and the Union Stockyards, all drawn from secondary sources already familiar to western historians, Carlson is particularly fascinated by cattle diseases and their relation to human health. She includes provocative chapters about the discovery of smallpox vaccine, mad cow disease, and other health concerns attendant to industrial-scale meat production. . . .

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