Here's Richard Wrangham's latest book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" to be published 25 May. http://tinyurl.com/oprjkd I'll find it a relief to read about the big biohistorical principles in the human story rather than blood tests results or treating obesity and other illneses. Here is the publisher's blurb: "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 sued 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." 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.” 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.” Wrangham offers his interpretation of the accumulating palaeontological evidence. It's open too us to interpret the new evidence differently, but Wrangham is always a great source of evidence - and the different possible interpreatations show us there is no simple "one-size-fits-all" model of human evolution. Here's a pre-publication interview with Wrangham in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/21conv.html?_r=1&ref=science Keith