Raw Dog

Raw Dog is a delightfully crude travel memoir that recounts a journey around the United States filled with the overconsumption of hot dogs, heartbreak, and a class-conscious history of urban development, meat packing, and national identity.

one of the best hotdog books we've got

If you are reading this book primarily for hot dogs, you are going to be disappointed. This book feels like a long stand up, loosely tied around hot dogs, a mix of social commentary, personal reflection, and food criticism. To me, the highlight of the book is the brief history of competitive hot dog eating contests.

I have a request: please don't read this book. No, wait - I don't mean that like it sounds. I mean please LISTEN to this book. I know the “audio books are cheating” feelings are real, but there are some books that are much improved by listening to them, and this is one. Jamie Loftus has a unique voice and a great energy that I'm not sure would carry as strongly in print. When you listen to the audiobook it's like you are hanging with your good friend James as she tells you about the extremely weird summer she just had.

This book may have surprised me the most of any book I have tackled in recent memory. I thought it was going to be a quirky book about hot dogs, but it is in fact so much more. Jamie tackles the tricky social elements inherent in a snack that is created to be unhealthy and served at low prices to poor people. It is also about - surprisingly - some important relationships in her life and what happens to them as a result of her American wiener quest. And most bizarrely, also hyperfocused on the social lives of the few, the proud: the Wienermobile drivers.

You can trust Jamie's reviews. She has the hot-dog bona fides, and takes her subject seriously, which is evident in the thorough and thoughtful methodology practiced in her field research. Her vivid descriptions of the businesses, their employees, and the foodstuffs themselves (plus sizable diversions on the marketing trend of personifying and gendering pickles, of all things) made me want to experience some of these places myself - and isn't that the mark of any successful travelogue?

I have never wanted to hang out more with an author that I wanted to hang out with Jamie Loftus after finishing Raw Dog (I read the audiobook). It's a special book not quite any one thing, but enough of everything. It holds together in a glorious winding tale that's funny, moving, and infuriating. I feel like it's not a spoiler to say that we are both team #ToastedBun.