BOOKEDUP: TAKING STOCK

BOOKEDUP: TAKING STOCK

Roger Morgan-Grenville is a late-to-life writer. First, he wrote about bees — Liquid Gold: Bees and the Pursuit of Midlife Honey. Then he wrote Shearwater: A Bird, An Ocean, and a Long Way Home. And now, he’s back with...cows.

Whether or not you live anywhere near a farm or even eat meat, cows are an integral part of all our lives. From the gum in gummies, the tires on our vehicles, the vacca in vaccines, sunscreen, laundry detergent, garden fertilizer, and everyday packaging…the list goes on and on.

Since Highland cattle ruined his grandmother’s vegetable patch when he was six, Roger Morgan-Grenville has been fascinated by cows. A age 61, with no farming experience, he signed on as a part- time laborer on a beef cattle farm to tell their side of the story. The result is this lyrical and evocative book.

I am not a farmer, I just happen to like cows. They press a button in my soul that other, perhaps better regarded animals, simply don’t.

For 10,000 years, cow and human lives have been intertwined. Cattle have existed alongside us, fed and shod us, quenched our thirst, and provided a thousand other tiny services, and yet most of us know little about them. We are also blissfully unaware of the de-natured lives we often ask them to lead.

Part history, part adventure and part unsentimental manifesto for how we should treat cows in the 21st century, Taking Stock asks us to think carefully about what we eat, and to let nature back into food production.

Weaving history and science with his own one-on-one experiences amid a collective of cows, Taking Stock is a delightful and fun book about our bovine companions: their history, their personalities, rare breeds and common breeds, all set against some very BBC-worthy backdrops.

Cows, after all, are ecological engineers (and also play a big role in climate change—though new methods to combat the methane emissions may surprise and even delight you).

Readers will be enchanted with the cow when they read Roger Morgan- Grenville moo-ving Taking Stock: A Journey Among Cows (Icon Books, October 2022). The author was a soldier from 1978-86 and later helped to set up the charity Help for Heroes. He lives in Petworth, England.

No cow could ever hope for a better appreciation of its truly unique worth.”— Betty Fussell, James Beard Award winner for magazine feature writing and author of The Story of Corn and Raising Steaks