CATCHING FIRE by Richard Wrangham

 

I know, I know. You were hoping that this was Catching Fire, the second book in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series. Sorry to disappoint. Maybe JJ will review that one in the near future. I'm sure it will be more engaging than this Catching Fire.

This is the second time now that I have been fooled by Michael Ruhlman. As much as I like what he writes, I can't go off his recommendations for reading anymore. First, his review of Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw prompted me to read that one. Then, I saw this video of Ruhlman talking about Wrangham's book:

Had Something to Say - Cooking from michael ruhlman on Vimeo.

Ruhlman sums up the book really well in this video. But his passion and excitement and the background music make the book sound more exciting than it actually was. Ruhlman makes his own leap about cooking and society around 2:22 but otherwise, what he says is what Wrangham writes.

There are some positives. The book isn't badly written. Despite being a Harvard anthropologist, the writing is very accessible. It's not like reading a scholarly journal. That being said, I had a hard time getting into it. Anthropology isn't a topic that interests me very much and I maintain a healthy degree of skepticism when we're making conclusions about how people lived thousands and millions of years ago. The remnants of life forms before us only give us some clues and from there, it's all speculation, usually based on some preformed concepts. Wrangham thinks cooking shaped how we evolved as humans. He may be right. He can fit the evidence to make it seem like it is so. And he certainly has the research to back his views. Over a third of the book is endnotes and bibliography. I'm sure there are anthropologists out there, though, that completely disagree with him, and can back their reviews with research as well.

The book certainly is different. My bias against the subject matter probably prevented me from liking it as much as a well researched and written book about another topic would. I just didn't care for it very much.And I'm going to stop listening to Michael Ruhlman when he has something to say about books.

--Jon