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Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

by Richard Wrangham (Author), Kevin Pariseau (Reader)
4.4 out of 5 stars 141 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • MP3 CD
  • Publisher: Brilliance Audio; MP3 Una edition (April 9, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1469298708
  • ISBN-13: 978-1469298702
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 6.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (141 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #762,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA brilliant and important hypothesis
By George Sand on June 9, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Around 1.8 to 1.9 million years ago, Homo habilis (a chimpanzee-like primate, but with a bigger brain and tool-making skills) evolved into Homo erectus. The changes were spectacular: Homo erectus had a 40% larger brain than Homo habilis; looked much more like a modern human than a chimpanzee; had lost its tree-climbing skills, but gained running skills; had a much smaller, and less energy-consuming digestive system (smaller mouth, teeth, jaws, jaw muscles, stomach, and colon); lost most of its coat of fur; and developed a social system based on economic cooperation: the husband hunted, the wife gathered and cooked, and they shared the food.

Wrangham argues that Homo habilis learned to control fire and that that fact is both a necessary and sufficient explanation for this evolutionary leap.

First, fire is used for cooking, as all primates find cooked food more delicious (even monkeys know to follow a forest fire to enjoy the cooked nuts). Cooking gelatinizes starch, denatures protein, and softens all foods, permitting more complete digestion and energy extraction. As a result, the food processing apparatus shrinks, freeing energy to support a larger brain. (After the gut shrinks, the animal can no longer process enough raw food to survive, but is dependent on cooking. Wrangham reports that humans with even a large supply of well-processed, high-quality food lose both weight and reproductive capacity on a raw diet, and that there are no known cases of a modern human surviving on raw food for more than a month.)

Second, fire provides defense against large carnivores, permitting Homo erectus to descend from the trees and live on the formerly preditor-dangerous ground.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA New Theory On What Makes Us Human
By John D. Cofield TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on June 8, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Anthropologists, historians, and theologians have many theories about how humans became "human". Dr. Richard Wrangham here posits that humans became "human" because we learned to cook our food over a million years ago, when homo erectus first tamed fire. Conventional theory holds that humans began to cook their food long after their path diverged from other primates, so its interesting to read Dr. Wrangham's belief that cooking was a cause rather than an effect.

Dr. Wrangham provides some fascinating material on how humanity began to physically separate from the apes, and how eating cooked food intensified the process and hurried it along. This has the potential to become impenetrably technical, but Dr. Wrangham writes clearly with the general reader in mind. I also enjoyed his coverage of the claims of present day raw-foodists, some of whom he interviewed. After that chapter I was left feeling simulataneous admiration for the dedication of raw-foodists and repulsion at the thought of following a similar diet myself! Dr. Wrangham has a good ear for an entertaining anecdote, such as the story of poor Alexis St. Martin, who survived a horrifying injury that permanently opened his stomach, thus involuntarily becoming an assistant to a researcher who wished to observe the process of digestion.

The text of this book is only about 200 pages. It is exhaustively researched and documented, with over 40 pages of notes, a 30 page bibliography, and a 20 page index. It will appeal to students of early man and to followers of Michael Pollan, with whom Dr. Wrangham shares a concern that humanity return to more natural and less highly processed food.
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5.0 out of 5 starsImportant contribution to anthropology
By Sam Thayer on June 27, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Anthropology is supposed to be the scientific study of humankind. Unfortunately, since its inception, it has been inundated by carefully disguised pseudoscience - attempts to use scientific data to support the preconceived biases of the investigators. Typically these biases (aka hypotheses) have been ethnocentric and agrocentric, and the arguments used to support them are often composed of flawed logic in the service of false implications. How relieving to read Wrangham's book, which actually appears to draw hypotheses from observations rather than a self-aggrandizing belief system. The author then analyzes realistic and sensible implications of these hypotheses, testing them in a simple but logical way that makes his conclusions seem obvious.

This is the kind of book that makes one wonder, "Why hasn't this been argued before?" While his book is rather small and the ideas are not deeply explored, this is largely because the hypotheses that Wrangham presents are quite new. I believe that his ideas will be supported, refined, and expanded by further investigation.

While some of his ideas appear outdated or unsupported (for example, he seems to suggest that hunter-gatherers were poorly nourished compared to later farmers, when in fact a substantial body of archeological evidence points to the contrary being true), and he makes some assumptions that are unfounded (for example, that human diets without cooking would be comparable to those of chimpanzees. This is highly unlikely, since pre-humans were bipedal, which suggests a far greater mobility geared toward different food preferences than apes that move on all fours or in trees.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

It was different aproch to evolution .

Published 27 days ago by Ahmad Akbari
5.0 out of 5 starsA hot mess!

This book is one of my all-time favorites.

Published 29 days ago by Dana McDonald, RD
5.0 out of 5 starsCurrently reading it. Will post more when I'm done ...

Currently reading it. Will post more when I'm done with it. It's interesting so far...

Published 2 months ago by R A Jolsvay
5.0 out of 5 starsit’s also a good overview of human evolution in general

Interesting read. I actually bought this as a graduation gift, found myself flipping through the first few pages, and ended up reading it through. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsCooking substantially improves caloric value of raw food and possibly...

Wow! an eye opener also for food scientists.

Published 2 months ago by Prof Michael Teuber
4.0 out of 5 starsand perhaps slower digestion is now a good thing in TODAY's world

It's really interesting! My one gripe is that at times it ignores the current culture that we live in, and so the concepts get a little confusing. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Michelle Sklaver
5.0 out of 5 starsengaging and thought provoking book

Great book! very well researched an written in a way that is accessible to non scientists. Made me excited to cook more!

Published 3 months ago by bell
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Fascinating book.

Published 3 months ago by mantramoon
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Well written - easy to read for anyone - fascinating theory.

Published 3 months ago by Frank Savastano
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat read

It gives joy to read a book such as this is devoted to going beyond Darwin's theory of evolution, especially if you cook! Great read!

Published 6 months ago by Wordsworth Penning Fancy

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