Jamie Loftus at the Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Jamie Loftus—comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, and podcaster—to celebrate the paperback release of her New York Times bestseller Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.

Ticketing

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a paperback copy of Raw Dog and pick it up at the event. Jamie Loftus will sign copies of her book after the presentation.

Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique—comedian Jamie Loftus's New York Times bestselling debut takes us on a cross-country road trip, and explores what hot dogs say about America now.

Now in paperback with a brand-new author introduction!

Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re kids' food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America's Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog.
Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelogue documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It’s a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest.
So grab a dog, lay out your picnic blanket, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-Eleven.

Jamie Loftus is a comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, and podcaster. She’s worked as a staff writer on Teenage Euthanasia, Robot Chicken, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, and wrote and starred in her own web series for Comedy Central. She writes and hosts popular limited-run podcasts—“My Year In Mensa” (2019), “Lolita Podcast” (2020), “Aack Cast” (2021), and “Ghost Church” (2022)—and cohosts, with screenwriter Caitlin Durante, a podcast on the How Stuff Works Network called “the Bechdel Cast.” She has her baby teeth bronzed and loaded into a slingshot.

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Host or Publisher Harvard Book Store