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A GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier is a B thoroughly engaging C historical novel that follows the life-changing experiences of D a quiet housemaid named Griet over the two years she serves the Delft painter, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675). B It is hard not to like this good and obedient protagonist, E for she struggles with universal yearnings such as love and an escape from poverty. Her life is a fairly solitary one as she finds herself growing apart from her family while living as an outsider in another’s home.

D The Vermeer family, with the exception of the painter himself, is not fond of the strange […] girl; and as Maria Thins, the grandmother, says, G “Never so much trouble with a maid before.” The real trouble comes, however, when the artist takes a liking to the young girl and allows her to assist him in his work.

F Griet is granted the privilege that no other family member has—helping Vermeer in his studio. Not even his wife Catharina is allowed to enter the studio, so this arrangement causes a great deal of tension within the household. Griet begins her work by cleaning the various still life objects that Vermeer will paint later that day. She is also given the responsibility of grinding the paints and even purchasing the colors from the apothecary. As if these “privileges” were not causing enough disquietude within the family, matters only get worse when Vermeer agrees, at a friend’s request, to paint Greit.

The moments in which Vermeer paints Griet are the H most spellbinding of the book. The reader feels Griet’s nervous emotions as she sits as still as possible under the close eye of the awe-inspiring man she has grown to love. F Her inner struggle is intensified by jealous Pieter, the butcher’s son, who has made no secret of his intention to marry Griet. The young maid, however, seems devoted only to her master and obeys his every wish. When he tells her to wear his wife’s pearl earrings for the painting, Griet agrees even though she knows it could lead to her downfall.

This book is I written with the same extreme care that Griet takes when cleaning her master’s studio. While Griet is quiet and obedient, the reader can see how full her heart is, as the emotions are conveyed magnificently across the page. The reader also has a very clear image of what Vermeer himself may have been like, and his J remarkable character draws the reader in as much as Chevalier’s charming history of a most intriguing painting.

Have you ever wondered when early humans first began cooking their food? Harvard professor A Richard Wrangham has some ideas. His latest book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, explores the role of cooking in human evolution. In this B fascinating and very readable book, Wrangham challenges us to look at one of the most common of human activities in a completely new way.

Scientists have found evidence of campfires from 800,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe that humans first learned how to control fire around that time. And because fire is needed to cook, archaeologists believe that the first home-cooked meal could not have been served any earlier than 800,000 years ago. C But biological anthropologist Wrangham does not agree with those dates. He argues that early humans started cooking long before that. In fact, Wrangham believes that cooking played an essential role in the evolution of our ancestor, Homo erectus, 1.8 million years ago. In other words, modern humans did not invent cooking—cooking invented modern humans.

Wrangham does not deny that the archaeological evidence of cooking goes back only 800,000 years. C However, he uses the evolutionary record, not the archaeological one, to support his theory. In evolutionary biology, it is widely accepted that modern humans’ early ancestor, Homo erectus, first appeared about 1.8 million years ago, when it evolved from an earlier species, Homo habilis.

Homo habilis had larger stomachs, teeth, and jaws than Homo erectus, but much smaller brains. Why were their bodies like that? C Wrangham thinks it was because they ate raw food. Those early human ancestors needed big teeth and jaws to chew all that raw food. They also needed large stomachs and intestines to digest it. And eating and digestion used up so much energy that there wasn’t enough energy left to feed a large brain.

C Wrangham argues that the shift from eating raw to cooked food enabled the evolution of the larger-brained Homo erectus. How? Cooking makes more energy from food available for the body to use. Cooked food is also softer than raw food, so the body uses less energy digesting what it takes in. Thus, cooking is extremely important to supporting a large brain, which consumes a quarter of the body’s energy. D “It’s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking’s nutritional benefits,” writes Wrangham. “It’s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.”

Cooking also makes eating faster and easier. Most of our primate relatives spent half the day chewing tough raw food, such as the stems and roots of plants. C Wrangham argues that because cooking freed early humans from all of that chewing, they could then spend time on more productive activities, such as the development of tools for agriculture, and social networks.

Many other scientists believe that eating meat, rather than cooking food, led to the evolution of Homo erectus. C That might explain Homo erectus’s large brains, but not their small jaws and teeth, argues Wrangham. Wrangham does not deny the importance of meat-eating to human evolution. However, he believes that meat-eating played a role in an earlier stage of evolution, from Australopithecines to Homo habilis—a species about the size of a chimpanzee, but with a larger brain.

Wrangham’s book leaves at least one important question unanswered. Why isn’t there any archaeological evidence of cooking until 800,000 years ago, at the earliest? E Many scientists see this gap in the archaeological record as evidence against Wrangham’s theory. They have a very good point. Nevertheless, F Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human provides the reader with some very rich food for thought.