"Like many others, Jonathan Safran Foer spent his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood--facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf--his casual questioning took on an urgency. So Foer set out to find answers for himself. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his...

"In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, "Abraham!" to order him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham responds, "Here I am." Later, when Isaac calls out, "My father!" to ask him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, "Here I am." How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others'?...