If he wanted to, Jonathan Safran Foer could have spent his entire career writing fiction.

At 25, he published his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, a novel that he started as a thesis project while he was still an undergrad. Just like that, a literary star was born. Illuminated went on to become a New York Times bestseller, and in 2005, it was adapted into a movie starring Elijah Wood.

Jonathan followed that up with a second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the story of a precocious 9-year-old, whose father is killed in the 9/11 attacks.

But Jonathan's latest effort is a different beast: it's called Eating Animals. Ever since the age of nine, Jonathan had been an on-again, off-again vegetarian, but that changed in 2006, after the birth of his first son. Fatherhood inspired Jonathan to take a closer look at what he ate, and where it was coming from. Three years later, he'd given up meat entirely, and written his first piece of non-fiction.

But Eating Animals isn't just some "anti-meat" rant; it's more of a personal philosophy of food. But it does cast a harsh light on factory farms, and asks anyone who eats food (that would be all of us) to think critically about what's on their plate.