Sports? Meat? Nothing like good stereotypes to fuel what dad might actually want - in the way of books. This is another 2002 book released as a paperback this month. Sorry, you'd think the book industry would be a little smarter in their new releases. (More likely I missed all the "macho/dad" related type books.)

This book - and say it with me now, "Portrait of a Burger As a Young Calf: The True Story of One Man, Two Cows, and the Feeding of a Nation," isn't any type of vegetarian diatribe or consumer service. Just seems to be a straight ahead look at the beef industry. Wiith a great title.

But then again, you could get the book - The History of Ties by H.A. Gin and A. Round

Publisher's Weekly (cited at Amazon)

A more generous view of the beef industry than Eric Schlosser's recent Fast Food Nation, this anecdotal account follows a cow's life from conception to consumption. Lovenheim (Mediate, Don't Litigate), a professional mediator, was buying his daughter a McDonald's Happy Meal with a coveted Beanie Baby cow when he was struck by how little most beef-eaters know about the process that turns cute calves into juicy burgers. He found an operating dairy farm near his upstate New York home that agreed to sell him two calves, and to allow him 24-hour access to all aspects of the farm's operation.