Meat Eater: Book-signing and talk with Steve Rinella, TV host and author

Steve Rinella — critically-acclaimed author, TV host, and hunter extraordinaire — will be speaking about his new book, Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter. Steve was formerly the host of The Wild Within on the Travel Channel and now hosts “MeatEater” on the Sportsman channel.

Steve will talk about hunting, ethical meat-eating, and some stories from his book — then we'll spend most of the time on Q&A.

TO RSVP, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS BUY ONE COPY OF THE BOOK, MEAT EATER.

1. RSVP to this meetup

2. Email me your Amazon or B&N receipt at [masked]

You can buy the hardcover (~$17) or kindle (~$14) at Amazon, buy it at your local bookstore, or bring the book to the event.

Anthony Bourdain praises Meat Eater as “a unique and valuable alternate view of where our food comes from—and what can be involved. It's a look both backward, at the way things used to be—and forward—to a time when every diner truly understands what's on the end of the fork.”

Steven Rinella grew up in Twin Lake, Michigan, the son of a World War II veteran and life-long hunter who instilled his deep love of the natural world in his three sons.  He began fishing at the age of three and shot his first squirrel when he was eight and his first deer at the age of thirteen. He chose the colleges he attended by their proximity to good hunting ground and as an adult he feeds his family from the food he hunts. In short, Steven Rinella lives to hunt and hunts to live.

MEAT EATER: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter is an exploration of humanity’s oldest pursuit and its relevance today through the lens of ten hunts, beginning at age ten when he was entranced by stories of the American wilderness (especially the exploits of his hero Daniel Boone) and ending as a husband and father with a freezer full of game meat in his Brooklyn apartment.  Readers accompany him as he attempts to eke out a living as a fur trapper in the late 1980s; to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in search of the challenging-to-capture but nearly-inedible bonefish during a flirtation with catch-and-release fishing; on a canoeing trip in the Missouri Breaks in search of mule deer; and on a hunt for the elusive Dall sheep in the glaciated mountains of Alaska.

Throughout the chronicle of Rinella’s lifelong relationship with nature and hunting, he grapples with themes such as the role of the hunter in shaping America, the vanishing frontier and the importance of conservation, the ethics of killing, the responsibilities that human predators have to their prey, and the near-disappearance of the hunter himself. Rinella argues that assuming responsibility for acquiring the meat that we eat—rather than entrusting it to proxy executioners, processors, packagers, and distributors—is one of the most respectful and exhilarating things a meat eater can do.

As the host of the television show MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel and the former host of the Travel Channel’s James Beard Award-nominated show The Wild Within, Rinella has had the rare opportunity to hunt around the world for most days of the year. The upshot of his extensive travel, coupled with thirty-plus years of hunting and fishing with his father and brothers, is an intimate knowledge of animals—how they move and how you should move around them, the sounds and smells they react to, how they are best broken down and transported back to camp after they are killed, and even why their fat tastes the way it does. Rinella shares his hard-won insights in his stories and, after each chapter, presents “Tasting Notes” on how to prepare, cook and eat wild game, both at home and over a campfire.

To read MEAT EATER is to sign up for an unforgettable journey into the remote corners of North America with master storyteller Steven Rinella and to learn what it means to be a real-life American Hunter.

About the Author:

Steven Rinella is the author of American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, which was the winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine. He is the host of the television show MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel, and was the host of the Travel Channel’s The Wild Within, which was nominated for a James Beard Award. He has a MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and his writing has appeared in publications as Outside, Field and Stream, New Yorker, New York Times, Vogue, Men’s Journal, Glamour and Salon. Born and raised in Michigan, he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.