When readers read page 99, they learn something about Jesse Jewell. I had to start from scratch and figure out what happened, when, and why. Turned out, however, that there was essentially no existing research on that subject. It was the hardest chapter to write (primarily because I had to figure out how to convey a great deal of information without turning the entire chapter into an information dump).īut because I decided to use Jewell as my “main character,” that meant I also had to understand and explain the creation of the modern poultry industry. The page is part of a chapter that ranges from the early 20th century to the 1950s, and explains how and why “factory” farming emerged in the U. In the case of page 99, it’s the height (or depths) of the Great Depression and I explain how and why a man named Jesse Jewell built a poultry-producing empire in northern Georgia. It’s a Major Life Moment when I finally distill the essence and figure out where that piece of the story should go. Which is another way of saying that I’m a historian, not a “writer.” I struggle to find and maintain a narrative. I laughed when I realized what was on it: 300 words of narrative/explanation that had been born as some 15,000 or so words and then tried out in what are now chapters 2 and 3 and 5 and 6 before finally landing in Chapter 4. She applied the “ Test” to her new book, In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America, and reported the following: Maureen Ogle is a historian and the author of several books, including Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.

Ambitious Brew by Maureen Ogle