In recent years increasing attention has been paid to cattle ranching and beef as an integral part of agricultural history. However, I suspect that for most readers Colombia does not figure high on a list of important Latin American beef-producing nations. There is good reason for this, since unlike Argentina, Mexico, or Brazil, Colombia has never held a significant position in the international cattle market. Yet according to this collection of stimulating essays, cattle and beef have been vital in the country’s development since the colonial era and have played a larger role in molding the nation than might be suspected.The compilation explores a comprehensive “national vision” of cattle that transcends regions. The authors hope this “transdisciplinary study” (p. 25) of interrelated essays on history, geography, political science, anthropology, and biology will make an important contribution to agricultural, environmental, and food history. By design there is limited emphasis on the history of land and power concentration or on social injustice, which often have guided analysis of ranching regions/frontiers. Cattle dominated the Colombian landscape over the period studied, though until recently their care was decidedly “traditional.” Yet ranching in Colombia was never as simple, irrational, or conflictive as often assumed, and research suggests that the production of beef owed as much to cultural as to political power. Arguing that the cattle sector remains one-dimensional without adequate understanding of on-the-ground economic and sociocultural inputs, the book explores such themes as the historiography of ranching in Colombia (much more extensive than might be presumed), historical geography, environmental impacts, cattle consumption and markets (including products besides beef), state discourses, and class/ethnic/gender divides.Given the range of these themes, it might be surprising that for most of the period neither beef nor most other meats were significant in the average Colombian diet. Some reasons were poverty, indigenous dietary preferences (even after four centuries of European influence), and access. The elites always ate some beef, but never as much as one might suppose, while the variety of tropical vegetables and fruits (and game for the rural poor) was extensive. With the twentieth century, however, beef and other domesticated meats came to be promoted and consumed much more heavily as part of a strong nationalist emphasis. For important sectors of the elite beef came to represent “progress” or “civilization” and the promotion of its consumption became a national priority. This included uneven support for a variety of infrastructural inputs, including regular veterinary care; breed and pasture “improvement,” primarily Indian-origin zebu cattle and imported African-origin grasses, which “homogenized” cattle production and ecosystems (p. 300); introduction of barbed wire fencing; and denigration of traditional dietary preferences. This conforms to the experience of other cattle sectors over the same period, as Colombian elites suffered from the same inferiority complex regarding their nation’s stage of development as their peers throughout Latin America. In order for the nation and its people to modernize, beef was the food of choice; it “supported the mind” and was the modern man’s option (p. 399). Racial and class inferences highlighted the politico-cultural factors that so dominated the promotion of beef in Colombia.Yet, as with most of the rest of the Latin American cattle industry (excepting Argentina) these measures only began to bear fruit from the middle of the twentieth century, and irregularly at that. While the elite might have preferred to explain this “delay” in racialized terms, ultimately societal transformations, specifically urbanization, made dietary transition possible, though unlike other societies beef still is secondary in the Colombian diet.While this work is remarkably informative, some aspects elicit questions. As explained various times in the collection, regional and ecological variations are fundamental to understanding the “diverse mosaic of [beef] production” (p. 79) in Colombia, yet this reviewer was sometimes at a loss to resolve the differences between one area and another. More discussion of regional distinctions and additional maps detailing environmental features might have made this clearer. At the same time, it is unclear how much elite promotion of beef as the “modern” food actually percolated into the masses. Cost was always a factor, but given that beef still is limited in the Colombian diet the appeal of such advertising is uncertain, despite its sometimes eccentric presentation. The introduction emphasizes this is not an exhaustive study, but such explanation might have enhanced the book’s contribution to environmental and food history.Notwithstanding these caveats, this is an invaluable study that transcends its apparent topic. It examines in depth the raising and consumption of cattle across time and space, emphasizing the complexity of the sector(s) and its wider impact on society and economy. Readers interested in animal and food studies especially will appreciate the connections between economic production, culture, environment, and social differentiation. The production and consumption of beef helped shape the developmental course of many Latin American societies over the past century and a half, and this work is indispensable in understanding that dynamic.