Have you ever wondered about the history of the application of heat to food?  When did it start? What has it done for human  evolution, culturally and physically?

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human (ISBN: 0465013627) by Richard W. Wrangham, a biological anthropologist/primatologist, at Harvard University, discusses the importance of cooking in human evolution. What impact did the shift from raw food to cooked food have?  He suggests that it affected the evolution of the brain and the gastrointestinal system.

This book presents a very different perspective on “humanity”–cooking food, rather than dependence on raw food, allowed social, household, and marriages. It’s an interesting perspective on our development as humans.

(I notice that this author has another book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, ISBN-13: 9780395877432. I find the title intriguing and given the author’s style I’d certainly like to read that one too!)