Catching Fire

How Cooking Made Us Human

By: Richard Wrangham

Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau

Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking.

In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be used instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor.

Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins - or in our modern eating habits.

©2009 Richard Wrangham (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Top 10 Books of 2009 (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)

• Books of the Year 2009 (The Economist)

"[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)

" Catching Fire is convincing in argument and impressive in its explanatory power. A rich and important book." (Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma)

Very interesting stuff.

A fresh perspective on the origins of humanity and the current struggle to control epidemic obesity.

Fascinating - relevant - accessible academic

Any additional comments?

This book was easy for a person like me to understand (one anthropology class in university) but well researched and structured. Very academic, so a little dry at parts but I liked the information so much it doesn't matter. Really interesting ideas that have implications for social policy, science, and our own individual diets.

Needs a chapter on the science of fire making.

I wish it would have covered the science of fire making. At least one chapter. Overall, an excellent book!

Wonderful exposition of a fascinating theory

Really wonderful scientific exposition of a very fascinating theory.
The language is clear and the examples simple but to the point, and especially it is absolutely not redundant when giving them.
The last chapter is a very welcome bonus linking the main content of the book with our everyday experience.

The performance of Pariseau is functional and clear, without special effects but not dull. The recording quality is not perfect though.

Food for thought

Informative, yet somewhat repetitive. The book provides some new angles to approach the evolution of humans and the cultural norms that bind them.

How my audible book review process caught fire

What made the experience of listening to Catching Fire the most enjoyable?

Learning about expensive tissue theory, and the highlights of evolutionary digestion made listening to this most enjoyable.

What do you think your next listen will be?

The Origins of Political Order From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama

What does Kevin Pariseau bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Kevin Pariseau has a "David Attenborough-like" narrative quality. He also nails some tribal pronunciations to great enjoyment.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

The expensive tissue theory is the most interesting tidbit from this book.

Any additional comments?

I found this book to be a bit dry at points. Yet overall, I must admit it is rather illuminating. As a novice/outsider to evolutionary anthropology, I feel like it bridged a gap in understanding for me. Particularly, the thesis/thrust of the book linking how cooking with fire changed our ancestors diet patterns and then in turn their cognition and behavior. The expensive tissue theory with the reallocation of tissue from the gut to the brain is mind blowing. I would like to learn more about that from a biochemist's point of view. Also, towards the end, he goes into the current trends and studies surrounding nutrition and metabolism. I would be curious to learn more about contemporary studies akin to David Atwaters experiment, that could foster better nutrition labeling and hopefully curb the pandemic of obesity in America and abroad. Worth a read, but certainly worth a listen. Thanks Audible!

Very Important

This book is really well-argued and full of important points, but I wish it was more thorough and all-encompassing.

Listen to Half the Book

Imagine a dry but appealing apple whose second half is spoiled. Dr. Wrangham once again ruins his work with terrible anti-male bias that no doubt sets well with the p.c. harpies at Harvard, where he is employed, but has been a thorn in this reader's side ever since buying his earlier book "Demonic Males." This text has eight chapters. The first five are well worth the listen as Wrangham is obviously quite intelligent, well read, well traveled and experienced. His credentials as a primatologist are outstanding. One sees him every once in a while on television, standing in a jungle, chewing on gorilla fodder, spitting it out and saying how bad it tastes. His idea that cooked food shortened the human gut, reduced human teeth, and enlarged the human brain, and therefore explains periods of major changes in human evolution, is an excellent insight. He writes in a terse manner, economical of words. His logic is generally well reasoned--although not always. If one reads carefully there are genuine non-sequiturs involving obtuse examples that have only vague connections to a subject under discussion, as well as post-hoc errors of logic which really don't prove anything. Dr. Wrangham also relies too much on examples to prove his points, ignoring others that don't. An argument based only on selected examples is faulty. By the second half of his book Wrangham moves much into speculation: "it might have been that" and "maybe" and "perhaps," etc. The second half is also repetitive; Wrangham made his points well in the first half of his book and should have quit there. Finally, the doc couldn't resist inserting two chapters full of misandrism, and by so doing throws his scientific objectivity out the window. Beginning in chapters six and seven ("How Cooking Frees Men" and "The Married Cook") the doc gets up to his old tricks of man-bashing. He should see another type of doctor, who would help him probe hidden childhood memories.

Very interesting and intriguing

This is a book that suggests a very interesting hypothesis that never occurred to me: that cooking made the apes human! This is a strong insight into the descent of man on Earth. The whole saga is revealed with "detective" skills by the author and this makes the lecture interesting to follow.
Some of the findings are also useful for the modern man trying to fight obesity and other are important from the anthropological perspective to the modern life issues as man-female relationship and place in society.
A very good book!

Not what I expected

True, I could have paid more attention to the title, or read the reviews carefully, but I thought this book was going to explain how cooking "grew up" over the ages. What it accounts...over and over and over again is the anthropology not so much of cooking in itself, but how cooking exists in primitive cultures. Interesting in one sense, but not at all what I was expecting. This book had promise it just couldn't deliver.