Includes bibliographical references (pages 324-340) and index.

Part one. Cattle and the making of Western civilization -- Sacrifice to slaughter -- Gods and goddesses -- Neolithic cowboys -- Gifts and capital -- Holy cow -- Matadors and Machismo -- Cattlizing the Americas -- British beefeaters -- Let them eat potatoes -- Corpulent cows and opulent Englishmen -- Part two. How the West was won -- Rail links and cattle crossings -- The great bovine switch -- Cowboys and Indians -- Grass is gold -- The politics of "corned beef" -- Barbed wire and land scams -- Part three. The industrialization of beef -- The beef trust -- The disassembly line -- Modern meat -- The automated jungle -- The world steer -- Part four. Feeding cattle and starving people -- Cattle everywhere -- Malthus and meat -- The sociology of fat -- Marbled specks of death -- Cows devour people -- Part five. Cattle and the global environmental crisis -- Ecological colonialism -- Tropical pastures -- Hoofed locusts -- Kicking up dust -- Quenching thirst -- Warming up the planet -- Part six. The consciousness of beef-eating cultures -- The psychology of beef -- Meat and gender hierarchies -- Beef, class, and nationalism -- Cattle and the frontier mentality -- The hamburger and the highway culture -- The deconstruction of modern meat -- Cattle and cold evil -- Beyond beef.