Springer Mountain - by Wyatt Williams (Paperback)

About the Book

"Restaurant-goers in the southeastern United States have likely noted the phrase 'featuring Springer Mountain Farms chicken' proudly displayed on their menu. After working the restaurant beat for years in Atlanta, restaurant critic and writer Wyatt Williams decided to find this fabled farm, to see just what, if anything, made Springer Mountain chicken so special. What he found instead was an elaborate marketing scheme. After some digging and a few interviews, Williams discovered that the Fieldale Farms Corporation, owner of the Springer brand name, sells millions of chickens from 'small family farms' like Springer Mountain that don't really exist. In fact, Fieldale is a huge factory farm producing poultry packaged under several different brand names before shipment to supermarkets and restaurants. After his Springer Mountain discovery, Williams spent a year dedicated to understanding what it meant to work and live meat. He moved to a chicken farm, learned to hunt his own game, worked on a slaughterhouse kill floor, and even traveled to Alaska to partake in Indigenous traditions around eating whale. Along the way, Williams contemplated the ethics and meaning of killing something in order to eat it, and how much work we do to divorce ourselves psychologically from that fact. A mix of investigative journalism, travel narrative, and creative non-fiction, Springer Mountain is not a polemic against nor a defense of meat eating. What we learn from the author's journey is that our modern connection to animals is predicated on why and how we kill them, that killing and eating animals is a human way of organizing and applying order to the world, and that the human pleasure of eating meat is indivisible from the pleasures humans take in assuming control, even over what lives and dies. This book shows how mysteries springing up from everyday experiences can lead us into the big questions of life, while examining the irreconcilable differences between humans and animals"--

Book Synopsis

Drawing on years of investigative reporting, Wyatt Williams offers a powerful look at why we kill and eat animals. In order to understand why we eat meat, the restaurant critic and journalist investigated factory farms, learned to hunt game, worked on a slaughterhouse kill floor, and partook in Indigenous traditions of whale eating in Alaska. In Springer Mountain, he tells about his experiences while charting the history of meat eating and vegetarianism.

Williams shows how mysteries springing up from everyday experiences can lead us into the big questions of life while examining the irreconcilable differences between humans and animals. Springer Mountain is a thought-provoking work, one that reveals how what we eat tells us who we are.

Review Quotes

"After finishing the book, I immediately wanted to read it again. . . . [A] very pleasurable read, ripe with metaphors alluding to larger truths about what it means to be human. . . . Springer Mountain is a richly detailed and thought-provoking work with a general appeal, inviting one to dwell within the human practices of carnivorous indulgence."--Digest

"Springer Mountain is a complicated, mysterious document, by turns poetic, problematic, perhaps even prophetic. At the end of the day, we might just call it a piece of literature, a work of art, an artifact all too rare in the world of food."--The Rumpus

"A short fever dream of a book. . . . Springer Mountain is a masterpiece investigation into the philosophy of killing for food."--Foreword Reviews

"A thoughtful, multifaceted reflection on what it takes to produce meat for consumers...The writing is downright lyrical at times, but also wry & sobering. Williams' goal is not to dissuade readers from eating meat, but to think about what goes into producing it for their consumption. The reality is not pretty, but Williams' prose makes it go down easy."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Similar to Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma, this engaging narrative will catch readers' attention and lead them to take a deeper look at the where, how, and why behind the food they consume...Using his extensive research and firsthand visits to farms and slaughterhouses, Williams creates a narrative of the culture, history, and societal views of meat, from factory farming to game hunting. Along the way, he offers personal insight from his years as a restaurant critic and food writer. In addition to foodies and historians, this book will appeal to readers wanting a better understanding of cultures and societies surrounding food."--Library Journal

"What are the implications of eating meat? In this release, former Atlanta restaurant critic Wyatt Williams applies years of investigative reporting to uncomfortable questions about animals and our appetites that, as factory farming proliferates, are only becoming more urgent. More profanely poetic than polemic--Williams is a kindred spirit to experimental essayists like Eula Biss-- Springer Mountain gestures at the beating heart of life's big inquiries."--INDY Week