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Cattle: An informal social history by Laurie Winn Carlson, Ivan R. Dee,
Chicago, $27.50, ISBN 1566633885

AS American writer Laurie Winn Carlson drove along country roads to a rural
history class at Washington State University, she became fascinated by cows. The
university was 75 miles away, and there was nothing much else to look at. She
began to watch eagerly for a glimpse of the new calves with their mothers, or
the 鈥渂oys鈥� club鈥� of bulls. She even looked forward to spotting them lying in the
shade, chewing the cud. Smitten by the beasts, she set out to write a book in
celebration of them.

Ever since the first artists painted cows on their cave ceilings, people have
valued these great walking larders, Carlson explains. A source of milk, meat,
horn, bone and hide, every bit of these animals was useful, while their strength
enabled the land to be ploughed. No wonder cattle gods abound. In ancient Egypt,
for instance, 鈥淗athor was the great mother, the goddess cow, whose body was the
heavens and whose udder spewed out the Milky Way.鈥� Even our alphabet puts cows
first: 鈥淎鈥� is an ox head turned upside down.

Our penchant for putting images of cows on everything from aprons to
refrigerator magnets may seem silly or contrived, but the practice echoes an
enduring sense of bovine sacredness, Carson argues. 鈥淏y tacking up a cow
calendar, or filling a cute cow-shaped cookie jar, women are unknowingly making
a connection to their ancestral past,鈥� she opines. Kitchen designers know that
anything with a Holstein on it will appeal to female shoppers, but why should
this be so? Carlson argues that since the beginning of agriculture, women have
been attracted to cows, to 鈥渄airy animals that signify the female, the domestic,
the mother of all鈥�.