Hog Ties

From Charlotte's Web to Porky Pig and Babe, Americans like pigs. In Hog Ties, Richard Horwitz looks at this phenomenon, its relation to American culture, and the way in which themes of life and death are played out in the care, feeding, slaughtering, and eating of pigs. Horwitz grew up in a rural Jewish household in the Northeast and worked part-time as a farm hand on a large Iowa pig farm. As much a memoir of rural life as it is a work of cultural commentary, Hog Ties looks at the current business of pig farming, its roots in the family farms of the Midwest, and its future in the large…