Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

A startling new theory that the invention of cooking led to the creation of the human species

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

Catching Fire is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution…[Wrangham] has delivered a rare thing: a slim book—the text itself is a mere 207 pages—that contains serious science yet is related in direct, no-nonsense prose. It is toothsome, skillfully prepared brain food.

Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and Curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at the Peabody Museum. He is the co-author of Demonic Males and co-editor of Chimpanzee Cultures. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.