Publishers Weekly
[A] fascinating study
Wrangham's lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, Paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking's role in daily life.
Publishers Weekly, starred review
[A] fascinating study
Wranghams lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cookings role in daily life.
Kirkus Reviews
An innovative argument that cooked food led to the rise of modern Homo sapiens.... Experts will debate Wranghams thesis, but most readers will be convinced by this lucid, simulating foray into popular anthropology.
The Harvard Brain
With clear and engaging prose,
Catching Fire addresses a key and enduring scientific issue central to the quest to understand our species. It offers new insights for anyone interested in human evolution, history, anthropology, nutrition, and for everyone interested in food."
Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University
In this thoroughly researched and marvelously well written book, Richard Wrangham has convincingly supplied a missing piece in the evolutionary origin of humanity.
Matt Ridley, author of Genome and The Agile Gene
Cooking completely transformed the human race, allowing us to live on the ground, develop bigger brains and smaller mouths, and invent specialized sex roles. This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive. He brings to bear evidence from chimpanzees, fossils, food labs, and dieticians. Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one.
Steven Raichlen, author of The Barbecue Bible and How to Grill; host of Primal Grill
A book of startling originality and breathtaking erudition. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as anthropology, sociology, biology, chemistry, physics, literature, nutrition, and cooking, Richard Wrangham addresses two simple but very profound questions: How did we evolve from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens, and what makes us human? The answer can be found at your barbecue grill and I dare say it will surprise you
Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma
Catching Fire is convincing in argument and impressive in its explanatory power. A rich and important book.
Seed Magazine
makes a convincing case for the importance of cooking in the human diet, finding a connection between our need to eat cooked food in order to survive and our preference for soft foods. The popularity of Wonderbread, the digestion of actual lumps of meat, and the dangers of indulging our taste buds all feature in this expository romp through our gustatory evolution.
Discover Magazine
fascinating
The New York Times
Catching Fire is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution...one that Darwin (among others) simply missed.
Slate.com
Brilliant
a fantastically weird way of looking at evolutionary change.
The San Francisco Chronicle
As new angles go, it's pretty much unbeatable.
The Washington Post
Wrangham draws together previous studies and theories from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, biology, chemistry, sociology and literature into a cogent and compelling argument.
Texas Observer
Wranghams attention to the most subtle of behaviors keeps the reader enrapt
a compelling picture, and one that I now contemplate every time I turn on my stove."
Providence Journal
Richard Wrangham presents this thesis in a concise, cogent, and accessible way.
The New York Times Book Review
A new theory of human evolution the cooking hypothesis is related in plain-spoken, gripping language.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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