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